• March 29, 2024

Mental Hospital Workers Talk About the Most Bat-Sh#t Crazy Things They Have Seen

Mental asylum workers of Reddit were asked: “What is the craziest thing you have witnessed during your shift?” Their answer poured in creepy.

#1

I did my internship at a state mental hospital, about 11 years ago, there was a guy there who spoke mostly Spanish and was known for exposing himself to various women throughout the campus. He wasn’t on my caseload, but he came to plenty of my groups and was polite to me and well-behaved. My last day at the hospital he walks up to me and hands me a crumpled brown paper bag and says he got something for me in his broken English. I was terrified to look inside, knowing his reputation and his violent history, but I peeked in and was shocked to see a small pink teddy bear. I still have it:)

#2

We had two elderly women in the same room, both suffering from dementia. At one point they came out of their room wildly arguing: “These are my pants, give me my pants back!!!” …”No, they are mine, go get your own pants!” …”I said, give me my pants or I will take them from you!” (I can’t remember the whole fight, but this kind of describes it). A colleague and I separated the two and walked a little with them, trying to calm them down. I went left, she went right. So the place where I work is shaped like a triangle and after two minutes of walking, we all ran into each other. And both of the two ladies were like: “Oh my god, it’s you, what are you doing here?”…”Heyyy, it’s a long time I haven’t seen you, how are you doing?” “This is soo awesome, I missed you!!!”. They sat down on the couch and began to talk. Five minutes later, they were arguing again: “I’m not in the hospital, YOU are in the hospital” …”NO!!! YOU are in the hospital!!!” …”NO, I’m fine, You are in the hospital!!!” …

#3

I work with mentally challenged adults and every day I have two older men, in their late 50s, who argue all day long. Every afternoon before it’s time to go home they share a nutter butter bar and each has a Coke and sits and talk with old friends. It blows my mind every day but it’s oddly touching.

#4

My sister is the director of a psychiatric hospital. there was recently a lady there who would cut her arms, legs, torso open and place photographs of her family under her skin.

#5

Only slightly off-topic:
I used to volunteer at an elderly care facility. We had this one guy with dementia who would complain to me every Sunday morning that his son was a deadbeat and would never show up to visit him.
Every Sunday afternoon, the son would come visit. So sad to see the brain go like that.

#6

Posted this before somewhere, but it kind of applies. I was a patient, not an employee.
I was in a psych ward for 10 days for attempting suicide. I had a terrifying experience of my life there. I was only 17 at the time and in a pretty bad mental state, which made the following even more disturbing for me. On the first day that I got there, I was assigned a roommate named John. He seemed pretty nice at first, and showed me around the hospital and helped me out while I was new. Something didn’t seem right about him though, he would stare into the distance for long periods of time, mouth open, drooling; until I eventually asked if he was okay.

The second night I was there, he informed me that he was a “satan worshiper” and had the ability to talk to the devil. This kind of freaked me the fuck out, mainly because he claimed that the devil and other demons were whispering to him all the time. This disturbed me, and I started to keep my distance from him. He stayed in our room (which by the way had its own private bathroom) for most of the evening, while I played basketball with the other patients to relax. When I had to come in for the night and went into my room, I noticed that John wasn’t in bed, and the bathroom door was locked. Then it struck me that the room had been absolutely demolished. The beds were on its side, and on the back of the headboard was a huge pentagram carved into the wood. Naturally, I started to be concerned, so I knocked on the bathroom door. I heard John making really weird noises and talking to someone in there. I waited 20 minutes to see if he came out, but he didn’t. The weird noises that he was making grew louder and he kept laughing and talking about someone, or something. Eventually, I decided to open the bathroom door because they did not have locks on the inside so patients couldn’t hide. When I opened the door, I saw John covered in blood, naked on the floor, eyes wide open staring at me. He had smashed the mirror in the bathroom and used the shards to carve deep gashes up his arms and legs. There was blood everywhere. I thought he was going to die, so I immediately rushed in and tried to help him up. BIG mistake. When I came near, he grabbed my arm and stabbed me with a piece of the mirror. I screamed, which caused the nurses to come rushing in and restrain him. He was laughing like a mad man. They brought him to the hospital for his cuts and I got stitches. I later got a new room and new room mate. The weirdest part? He came back 7 days later, but stayed in a different ward for psychotic; He came up to me at dinner and had no recollection of the event. Most terrifying week of my life.

#7

Just out of college, I worked in a residential facility for kids who had been taken out of their homes due to abuse or neglect. It was by far the worst job I’ve ever had, both because of the shit in the kids’ files — in some cases, we even had to meet and work with their abusers — and because almost all of them had severe behavioural/emotional problems. They had to be watched 24/7 or they would sneak meds, have sex in the bathrooms, destroy things for no reason, etc. Some had to be restrained frequently, so I’d come home at night with fingernail scratches all over my arms. That was fun to explain. (“Oh, these marks? Got ’em from a feisty twelve-year-old.”)
I lasted about four months. It’s amazing to me that there are people who can do jobs like that for years or decades. My hat is off to them; I would be as crazy as those kids within a year.
Oh, you wanted the single craziest story. One kid had been subjected to such horrific abuse that he could barely communicate. I’m talking literal torture, being chained up like a dog for months, as well as repeatedly raped. Apparently, his mom had done the worst of it (and was still in prison), but his dad had been involved too. Here’s the weird part. The dad came in on a weekly basis — he would have come in every day if it had been allowed — and visited his son, read to him, worked on projects for school, etc. I was all set to hate the guy but it was obvious after a while that he was sincerely trying to help. I never knew what caused him to do the things he did, but I had to respect him for making the effort to repent.

#8

I worked with a 50 yr old white female, she had downs and early onset Alzheimers and looks very typical downs syndrome (its obvious by looking at her that she is low cog). by far one of the most challenging direct care clients I’ve had. which is saying a lot. she was an escape artist & loved loved loved to steal. Esp soda and mail. anyways… she escaped one late afternoon from the house (despite all doors and windows being alarmed) and went to the liquor store about 3 blocks away. Chugged a 6 pack of PBR in front of the two store clerks and then grabbed another 6 pack and run back home. I was out looking for her (liquor store was my 2nd stop after MacDonald) and when she came back into the house she ran upstairs into the bathroom and barricaded herself in and the other staff heard her chugging the rest of the beer. She is less than 5 feet and consumed 12 beers within 30 or 40 minutes. Obviously, in a group home, she normally doesn’t drink. She danced around and giggled for a while, & then passed out. the kicker? she later yelled at me belligerently for making her feel dizzy and like she was dying. one of my less heavy stories.

#9

I used to spend a lot of time with mentally handicapped people. The reason being my community in which I lived was new and had no public transport for 2 years (thanks) so to high-school, I had to take a charter bus…. which doubled as the bus which picks up all the special students.
I’m sorry and mean no disrespect but some of them can be devious little shits. One would play music and just giggle (worst music possible) yet she still knew what she was doing. Another Downs syndrome student would steal, and even use physical violence when attempting to tell him off. He would grope the regular female students and show pictures of.. er.. himself. When confronted by teachers he would blame us for lying, cry and start hitting himself on the head and of course get away each time. An hour and a half every morning and after school for a whole 2 years, three hours a day of it.
TL;DR mentally challenged kids can get away with anything.
Also, my grammar may be terrible as I’m on a mobile phone typing this

#10

Well then, in that case:
Weirdest thing I have ever found in a sewer line:
This is also the most disgusting so viewer discretion is advised.
About two years ago, I was called out to the same hospital ward. They were complaining about toilets and showers backing up the whole ward. So me and my coworker who was also my roommate at the time get up and head out because it is about 2 am in the morning. We are quite pissed because the past two weeks has been nothing but back to back calls of these loonies throwing shit down the toilets. I’m talking paper towels by the roll, latex gloves, toothbrushes and anything else they can get their hands on. But this special night I saw one of the worst things I have ever seen.
So we get to the ward and the whole place stinks to high heaven. We crawl under the building and release the main line so that the ward at least isn’t backing up. We then take our better ( which is a pressure washer hooked to a high-pressure hose with a nozzle that can cut through just about anything that backs up the sewer) and we try to busy through whatever was clogging the lineup. So after a few hundred paper towels, we hit something that doesn’t want to break. We get the high powered metal snake, a bigger version of the ones you can rent to DIY. Now the snakehead was two hacksaw blades that spin around rather quickly to cut up and grab ahold of whatever the clog is.

What we pulled out, and I shit you was not a shredded fetus. Now you hear rumours about people having Walmart abortions and I’ve heard old men stories shooting the shit but it was the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The worst part was getting the torn up thing off my snake.

#11

Worked in a residential community for adults with special needs for a few years. I’ll just highlight some of the stories that stick out. -One resident stole markers/pens/pencils/anything not bolted down. (I taught art and ‘academics’)He hid them in his socks, feigned that he couldn’t walk and would take off in a full sprint if I asked for my markers back. Oh, he also hid the sausage in his socks.
-2 residents caught having sex, how they were caught, you ask? He had poison ivy across his whole backside, and she had it on her knees. She had Downs and was horribly mean when we wouldn’t let her sit near the men.
-so much old man dick/masturbation. House checks after lunch were not my favourite.
-one of the residents who was confined to her bed had a worker go buy her a vibrator and lube. Actually, it was her family who requested it. Now, I know you’re thinking ‘that’s not so bad!’, what’s bad is when she would finish her ‘alone time’, she would throw the slimy vibrator at the nurse and tell her to ‘wash my dick, you n****r!’ That nurse was a saint.
-got my head smashed into a metal door frame by a giant 6’5″ autistic guy, blacked out, came to, and still made him get off the computer to go to lunch. Went to write an incident report, my manager told me not to as she didn’t want him getting into trouble.

The worst, though, was the administration. I loved my residents and working with them. Management made it impossible to continue to work for them. The final straw was when the ‘doctor’ that came every 2 weeks and spent a total of 30seconds-2 minutes with each resident and alter their medications based on that…dumb bitch ended up giving a resident 2 meds that should not have been mixed. He ended up in the hospital and was basically a vegetable walking around. Broke my heart.

#12

Have not officially been employed by a Mental institution, but have done my school clinical hours at one. The worse/craziest thing I have seen was with an older male patient suffering from dementia and a slew of other issues. He was on bed rest and also partially restrained with a Sitter ( a nurse who sits with the patient and watches them 24/7). The Sitter needed to use the restroom and asked me and another student to watch the patient. We agreed. Around 2 minutes into being into the room with him, the patient reaches down with his free hand and starts to tug on his catheter (catheters are tubes inserted into the urethra in order to empty urine from the patients on an ongoing basis). Before we could move closer to the bed, the patient full on rips that catheter out of his penis/urethra…. Now, to take a second to explain something. Catheter is inserted and when they are fully inside you a small balloon is filled with saline solution. This is done in order to keep the catheter in place. Before you remove catheters, you have to deflate the balloon in order to avoid pain/damage.

Back to the story, the patient ripped that catheter out of his urethra. It is quickly followed by a gush of blood and urine. So now the patient is covered in blood and his own urine, all over his hand, his legs, his genitals, his bed. Holding the catheter in one hand, he lays there smiling like nothing is wrong. Just thinking about the incident kinda makes me faint in the head still

#13

Not a psychiatric hospital worker but I work in A&E and get to deal with all sorts of people. One shift, an old lady comes in from a nursing home with complete dementia. At some point during the day, I’m next to her bed. I can’t remember the trigger – maybe I was tidying up her table because dinner was coming. Anyway, she reaches into her incontinence pad, pulls out two handfuls of her particularly runny faeces and moves to put them on my face (I was close enough). I seem to remember shouting “Waa-NO-NO-NO-NO!!!”, leaning backwards from her Matrix-style, then realised I had to try to keep her shitty covered hands away from her face while shouting for another colleague. I’d been on the job three weeks, and had a group of other people’s relatives as an audience.
Other stuff…demented (as in the medical term) old people are the best/worst.

I’ve been touched up, called fat and slapped in the face by them. I get some pretty wicked guilt trips because understandably, they feel like they’re being imprisoned while in the hospital, so they ask me if my parents are proud of me, if I feel good about myself, if I know I’m going to hell etc. It’s all good fun.

#14

Alright! Something I can actually answer!
Six years ago I was fresh out of college with a psych degree. Seeing as though there isn’t much you can do with a bachelor’s in psych I decided to apply for a job in an acute psychiatric facility (the term asylum is incredibly antiquated). I got a job as a mental health worker aka a “milieu therapist”; essentially you ensure the patients (also called “clients”, but I never quite liked that term) don’t harm themselves or others. I was working in the dual-diagnosis unit, which is the non-acute unit of the facility, but due to lack of staff, I was quickly transferred to the acute unit. The acute unit houses the psychotic, often violent patients.

A little background story about how most of these facilities work: most people would come in from an emergency room (we did not take people off of the street). The patients would be screened for any potentially serious medical conditions in an ER, and once cleared, they would be sent to our facility to stabilise. We had people who had gone off their meds for whatever reason, people who had attempted suicide, people who wound up in the ER for ODing on

drugs, etc. etc.
Here are some of the fun things that happened to me:
A young girl came in; immediately fell in love with my co-worker… He was assigned to monitor her since she was a suicide risk. His shift was ending so I took over for him. Once the girl saw me, she yelled for my co-worker to come back. After realising this was futile she chugged a small bottle of shampoo and started banging her head against a window. She was quite large (obese, 5’9″). My co-worker came back and we calmed her down as she began vomiting shampoo in her room. As I was taking her blood pressure she caught me off guard with an elbow to the stomach and ran for the door (I quit after this incident.)

One woman used to stand by the door every day asking if her husband was going to come get her. I asked her who her husband was, and she mentioned some morning show host (the name eludes me).
Watch an incredibly fit young kid scale a 10-12 ft fence Jackie Chan style.
This happened on my shift. Bonded with a patient over music. The kid turned me onto some good metal bands and we generally had a good rapport with each other. I left for the day and as I was rounding the corner. He was standing there… waiting. I froze in fear and nervously said ‘hello’ as I tried to move past him. He blocked my path, proceeded to hug me and asked me if I wanted to get high.
That tops the list… if I think of anything else I will post.

#15

My Pepere worked in a mental health centre as a recreation worker/therapist. I think you might have a real fictionalised idea of what “mental asylums” are. Straight jackets are so rarely used now and actually haven’t been used that much for awhile. People who are that difficult to control are usually strapped to a bed first, but on the very rare occasion, they will be put in a straight jacket. But that kind of stuff is way more common in TV and movies.
People did, however, go missing quite often from my Pepere’s hospital and still do from that hospital (I assume patients running is a common problem at many mental hospitals).
He worked most often with people with addiction problems and people with severe depression. He said that most frequently he would see people trying to get high off of really weird things, though he never specified what.

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