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I’m not a psychologist but my friend is. She told me about a patient of hers who was HIV-positive and a paranoid schizophrenic. He thought that the nurses who worked at the hospital he was in were trying to kill him, so he would frequently bite his tongue and spit HIV-positive blood into their faces/mouths. When they had to come into contact with him, they were required to wear full masks and gloves.

Psych tech here. The few child fetish people I have met typically lead normal lives and have a compulsion that can’t be stopped, and when they get caught, they enter a state a pure self-destruction. It’s the worst depression and suicidal ideation I’ve ever seen. We have to keep them in seclusion with absolutely nothing, not even a cloth gown or they will attempt.

My mom used to do shifts in the psych ward at the hospital. She once had someone describe in detail to her how he had sex with a fly. Another injected vinegar in their eye with a syringe to kill the alien that was living there.

Psych worker here but not a psychologist.

Girl tried to repeatedly poison her mother over and over.

Schizo-affective guy liked to have sex with dogs, kill them, and cut their heads off…………..parents kept getting him new dogs.

My mom worked in mental institutions in her younger years (and actually worked at a large, well known asylum before it was shut down.)

There was one woman there that thought she was a vampire of sorts. She was only allowed out one hour a day, and they had to use safety precautions. She had already attacked and killed at least one hospital worker before these were enacted.

When my Mom asked about her, it was revealed that she had killed at least two of her children, wounded another as well as her husband because she had some sort of physical condition called Porphyria, which apparently made her crave blood.

By the time that they discovered there was something physically wrong with her, she already had lost her mind from guilt and grief.

One teen boy I met had trouble getting along with others. His mother used to strike him with a whip while having intercourse with him on an altar as part of a satanic ritual.

Anther boy was 11 and one of the best-behaved children on his unit. This was amazing given the fact that his parents used all their children as child prostitutes, forced them to have sex with each other, and also forced them to eat feces with their oatmeal breakfast.

A teen girl had overwhelming compulsions to shove things into her vagina and we were forced to keep her in wrist to waist restraints with “mittens” on her hands to prevent this. She would put staples, pencils, anything really inside herself. She had been raped by all the males in her family, brothers, father, and grandfather.

I don’t know the history of the other teen boy, but he would have sex with anyone and anything. He claimed to be sexually attracted to the space shuttle and desired to be a welding machine when he grew up. He was once caught masturbating with a grasshopper in his hand. When asked, he said he was having sex with the grasshopper. He masturbated so frequently that we were required to give him a small cup of Vaseline at night so he wouldn’t chafe.

I was in an adolescent psych ward for a week last month and I heard a lot of fucked-up stories in that short amount of time. In group therapy there was this 13-year-old boy and his mom turned into an alcoholic after his dad died and she was beating him and he spent most of his life in and out of there just to get away from her and CPS didn’t do anything about it.

I work in an in-patient psychiatric hospital and have seen some serious shit. One story in particular stands out.

A 12-year-old boy who was diagnosed with schizophrenia apparently was also a pyromaniac. He would set small fires in his yard but never anything huge until he burned down his house, killing his little sister, mother, and grandmother. While in the hospital, the kid would frequently vomit on himself, smeared the vomit all of his body, and complain of seeing demons. Really fucked up stuff.

My most disturbing was a young man who thought someone was stealing his penis at night “for nefarious purposes”. He knew this was happening because it would “change colors and tingle”. He also saw snakes (hallucinations) and heard people talking to him through the walls and radios (also hallucinations). He stopped taking his medication because he got in a fight with his caregiver.

I can share a patient experience. I got insanely drunk one night and my crazy got away from me and I did some stupid shit. I woke up around 4pm the next day and after a quick shower I barely had time to dress before the knock on my door. Local mental health crisis intervention team. 4 police officers, one of them a trained mental health professional, and what seemed like half the force waiting in the bushes in case I got out of hand.

Now I probably deserved to be arrested and given a court appearance for what I did, but they decided to drag me off to the psych ward instead. I spent three days sleeping on a stretcher in the intake office because there were no beds anywhere in the city. I was no longer drunk, and although I had the worst hangover in my life, and I was going through an incredibly difficult time in my personal life, I was no danger to anyone. Because of the situation I found myself in, I was very desperate to go home. I begged and pleaded to go home and promised to go to outpatient treatment. A promise I would have very much kept. I explained in no uncertain terms that being there against my will was the worst place they could put me for my mental health. They refused.

For the few days I was on a stretcher in intake there were a couple other patients sleeping on stretchers. One was a suicidal girl who checked herself in. After three days of me begging to go home, they found a bed for me at another hospital. Two minutes later they tell the suicidal girl that she has to go home because they don’t have room for her in the city. I sat there and listened to her call her mother on the cell phone for a ride home and all I can hear from the other end of the line is the mother screaming at her daughter for checking herself out and not getting the treatment she promised she would seek. The poor girl just sat there crying. What I wanted more than anything at the time was to get away from that horribly oppressive place that cast such a weight on my sanity that I can scarce imagine how anyone could be subjected to such indignation and expected to retain their cognitive functions.

In the end I spent close to a month in the psych ward. After a couple of weeks they showed up with a piece of paper they claimed was a court order allowing them to force me to take drugs. Told me if I didn’t take the drugs they would hold me down and inject me with them. I took their drugs and left a week later. I continued to try the drugs for a month or two for the sake of my ex, who had moved out while I was in the hospital and I wanted her back. She ended up dumping me and I stopped taking the pills, which literally did nothing for me except make me tired. In the end, the only thing to come out of the stay was a life experience that will scar me and the understanding that you never, never seek help or open up to a mental health professional. Ever. You are not a person to them, you are a condition, and the things that come out of your mouth are not words, but rather products of said condition.