Crazy for you

I’ve been meaning to at least update my blog for the past 3 months but I cannot put everything that happened and organize it to one concise post. Now, everything’s been piled up and I don’t know how to start.

Ok, I’ll try this way. At the moment, I just had my duty at the National Center for Mental Health. For other schools, the duty should last for 4 weeks. Ours, specifically our group only had 4 days. It wasn’t enough to fully have an interaction with our clients but it is enough to see that there a lot of people who needs understanding and therapeutic means to console their needs.

One of the highlights of that exposure (for me) would have to be the self-awareness activity, which we had before meeting our patients. It’s about expressing our genuine feelings and just being true about our life and how we feel about it. We had to draw a figure of a man and put symbols, words or phrases to symbolize our answers to a particular question (e.g. for the head region, draw a symbol of your God given talent, for the right eye, draw a symbol of who you are right now). I was the first one called to interpret my drawing. I am a bit confident with my work since it’s just trivial and I know how to express it, but what caught me off guard was the part when I had to tell bout the person who’s responsible in my life, and reversely, who I am responsible with. It all started with that question and my CI inquired more. It had somehow touched a sensitive part in my life which I thought I am over with, but tears just welled up in my eyes and I just have to pour it all. It was hard telling it to a friend, and admitting that kind of situation, all the more it was hard to tell it to a group of 12. Unexpectedly, I felt so light after sharing it, and somehow realized that I am still accepting everything that has happened. I am still in the process of accepting everything that changed in our life. And I have to be strong for them.
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Another experience was interacting with our patients who are mostly schizophrenic. Mine is mentally retarded. He’s nice and behaved, only he got this separation anxiety. He had a fight with his fellow dorm mate during our last day there just before he went out of his dorm. We didn’t do much during our duty there mostly therapies such as Remotivation, Music and Arts, Occupational, Culinary, and Biblio therapy. We weren’t able to talk much with them vis-a-vis.

The last one was the tour in the special ward. We went to a pavilion where most of the male patients are naked whole year round. Most of them are regressing, so they are either curled up in a fetal position or naked. If they are not doing anything, they would either play with their thing, or kiss other mates, and then play with their thing. According to our CI, it’s their way of releasing tension and stress. The window between the ward and the nurse’s station were full of the byproduct of their past time, and the stench, incredible (even though they bathe everyday).

The next ward consists of chronic patients who are either violent to themselves or other patients, so a restraining bed or chair is always at hand. Most of them are shouting and they are mostly the kind you would not want to get near you because they are unpredictable. But of course, just like everyone else, they have the right to get the necessary care to treat their illness.

There is also the ward for those who are 18 and below. There are the female wards of course, both pay ward and charity ward. We weren’t able to visit the forensic male ward where all those who committed crime, yet who claimed to be crazy where put into.

ECT or the Electric Convulsive Therapy was another thing. We were able to witness and assist the patient as they go about the therapy. It was both an interesting and scary thing to witness. However, it’s something that would help their anterior frontal cortex to open up and receive brain waves better so they really have to undergo that procedure.

Lastly, it’s all about all meeting up with my friends at quarter to six in the morning and gather up at boy-okoy’s car that would transport us to NCMH, eating the excess food for our patients, imitating some of the model patients there like the “Converted One with the Power of the Twin Rats”, the “Debater”, or the “Best in Chat”; the Socialization we had in the end along with the games that come with it, and of course our “Itaktak Mo” dance, no matter how crazy we all look like.

In the end, we realized that some of them are really smart and that they need to be treated just like an adult and not as a kid who only knows grade school stuff. They need caring and understanding and not just to be the laughing stock. They are also human and that we must respect them as one.