Valerian root. It’s GABA active. Smells like either manure or freshly rained on soil though depending on your nose in a similar way to how cilantro taste varies between people. It’s what’s in sleepytime extra.

tbh most psych units I’ve worked don’t even do that kind of ED. We’ll do BED in a pinch but anorexia nervosa or bulimia with significant weight loss is either stable enough to be managed outpatient or unstable enough that it needs either medical hospitalization or a specialized unit. I’ve worked one psych unit that could handle telemetry and they wouldn’t have liked having to.

imma have to steal a cuff from peds to measure that bp

Guilty as minted.

I’ve noticed in codes I just have to step into the middle of the room put some bass out from my chest and point at people and give simple instructions (and these are psych codes so it’s usually “ALICE -> THAT ARM. BOB -> THE OTHER ARM. CAROL -> LEGS. DAVE -> GO GET THE RESTRAINTS.”

But then sometimes something very unexpected comes up like a very large patient dropping their weight into a weird position. So the important thing there is to hopefully come up with an idea quickly and give the simplest way possible to explain to everyone to move as a team. But sometimes someone else comes up with a good idea before me and then you go “CAROL’S RIGHT. ON THREE WE’RE GONNA ___.”

So. 0. Know what the fuck you’re doing enough that you’re respected as an authority figure.

1. Confidence in posture and voice.
2. Point and use simple instructions.
3. Confidence doesn’t mean ego. Recognize a good idea when you hear it and use it.

Probably not what you were asking but I hope it helps.

Well. Emotional swings like that can occur as part of a manic episode specifically. Mania just means the emotions come faster than usual, not that they’re good. Ppl w mania are actually frequently extremely angry, usually because they’re going a million miles an hour and don’t understand why everyone else won’t just keep. tf. up.

But yeah if op has always just been like that consistently without any ebb and flow over month’s / years then yes it points more towards a thought disorder. I used to have a really cool infographic from a textbook on the differential dx between borderline, bipolar, and adhd since they can all have very similar presentations or even just be comorbid in certain patients.

I’ve actually seen a good few patients who we all swore up and down were borderline then the meds would click into place and oh. Look at that you really were just bipolar. huh. (I say all of this having a childhood dx of ADHD, an adult dx of borderline, and a current psychiatrist who thinks I’m bipolar so…)

As a night shifter whose employer exclusively uses Windows, ty

Fun fact: In addition to being willing to sit in a square outlined on the floor with tape, Cats will literally sit in the illusory suggestion of a square shape.

Psych patients actually do this a lot. Some places I’ve worked actually have protocols for it that include stuff like having the bathroom locked and only unlocked for supervised use, or having the water only be cut on when the contents of the toilet have been verified (also helpful to have water shutoffs for psychogenic polydipsia because they WILL drink their way into a hyponatremic seizure and they dgaf if it’s from a toilet) but also for the flushing usually they’re limited to one set of clothes and bed linens, one towel / washcloth, and have to ask for small quantities of toilet paper as needed. Then they yell at you about having to ask you use the bathroom like they didn’t flood the unit three nights in a row. One time we didn’t catch it fast enough and some poor bastard on medical got leaked on. Motivations vary but the most common is wanting to feel in control of something and it can be difficult to try to find safe things for that kind of person to be allowed control over.

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Also I’m specifically a gnostic / esoteric Christian at this point so the obligatory:

If I’m gonna believe some wildass shit I might as well really go for it you know?

Oh I legit notice a spike in mania cases this time every single year. Idk if it’s making people manic as much though as it is that they would also be manic in February but they’re too busy having seasonal affective depression instead. So the sun wouldn’t be making them manic so much as it’s just keeping them from getting depressed (which they’re already sensitive to with an affective disorder of any kind) and that allows for more mania.

Just because their corpses are there doesn’t mean their shit isn’t!

I wish there were more Christianity comms (I’ve got some Bible shitposts too) but pretty much all of them get brigaded / downvoted by people who don’t even follow the subs and by all appearances don’t know what a block button is.

Funnily enough this was actually taught to me as a precipitating factor to constipation in a hospitalized patient. If they’re a coffee drinker and / or cigarette smoker at home, and their morning coffee + cigarette has been replaced with shitty weak hospital brew and a patch, their bowel muscles might forget they actually have a job to do. Not that you should encourage bad habits, but you might need to mindfully replace them with another laxative or in some cases just accept that people do things that are unhealthy and you’re not going to fix 20+ years of substance dependence in one stressful AF hospital stay. Still can’t let them actually smoke cigarettes but maybe some gum or a lozenge.

yes it’s very likely to either get torn apart by interpersonal tensions such as infidelities or economic power struggles or just devolve into a new age cult of some kind, and usually some combination of all three from what I’ve seen of those kinds of communities.

working in psychiatry for as long as I’ve had, the people I admire most are actually the ones who are just decent every single day. the ones who know everybody’s kids names and remember everybody’s birthday. I don’t know how they do it. I became the person who helps pull apart people trying to bite each other’s faces off because idk how to remember birthdays and I was hoping it would be something people appreciate but day to day it actually really isn’t and the reason why becomes obvious pretty quickly. the people who make the biggest difference in people’s mental health are people who know how to plan a good Friday night get-together and how to follow up when they haven’t heard from one of the invitees for two weeks in a row.

I have borderline personality and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. I was so unmanageable as a teenager (and twice a month since my cycle was coming every two weeks) that my fundie parents put me on birth control at 14 years old.

also helps to plan difficult conversations if it’s something that can wait a few days or that could wait a week but you know you need to do it sooner rather than at the end of the week when she won’t be able to respond as charitably. me and my husband keep track of each other’s hypomanias and depressions for similar reasons.