My First One

Welcome to The Nuthatch, as in loony bin. I don't know why, but I prefer nuthatch to loony bin when referring to my place of employment: a psychiatric hospital. I often leave here at the end of the day with some story, observation or question swimming in my head -- this can be pretty intense work. So I'm hoping that this blog will help me sift through all that, and be entertaining to read. You'll let me know.

Right off the bat, I want to be clear about a few things: it's not my purpose to either romanticize or demonize mental illness in general, or people with mental illnesses. My patients can sometimes be pretty crazy, confusing, infuriating, tragic or gosh-darn-it funny, either wittingly or unwittingly. Just like everybody else. When I'm talking about my day among friends, I try to be careful to point out that I'm not meaning to make fun of crazy people. I think that comes across in person, but in writing, I'm not so sure it will. It'll be a challenge. So to be clear up front: I think that recognizing that crazy people can inspire the range of responses in us that anyone else would is humanizing for us and them. And if those of us who care for folks with mental illnesses can't laugh and/or cry about it from time to time, we become wooden, saccharine and/or sadistic. And that helps no one. So if you find a bit of trench humor offensive, this might not be the blog for you.

Second: I'm not here to either defend or detract from the psychiatric profession, or the mental health profession more generally. We live with a number of tensions -- dialectics, if you will -- that maybe I will blog about. Things like, to what extent are we a safe place for people who are unable to keep themselves safe, and to what extent are we a prison; or at what point are we trying to help people lead more functional lives, and at what point are we making value judgements about what "normal" is and what "sanity" is; or is diagnosis reductive and dehumanizing, or is it a tool that is useful in communicating with patients and each other. To name a few. These are the ambiguities with which we live and that are part of what makes our work interesting and challenging. In other words, I don't have a point to make about psych hospitals, I just want to tell you about my day.

So that's my first post. Whew. Next time, I'll make good and in fact tell you about my day.

Madeline