Why I left Psychiatric Nursing

 In his morning blog, Cro discussed the state of psychiatric care in the country, discussing its efficacy especially when dealing with the sad case of the recent Devon Shootings.

I trained as a psychiatric nurse back in 1983, just as the big asylum system was closing and the relatively new community nursing system was being set up and greatly expanded.

The nurses, especially on the acute admission wards, were becoming much more psychologically focused in their care and training, like most in nursing was becoming more academic, research based and professionalised. 

It was an exciting time to be a nurse, in many ways but after just three years training and three years staffing on an acute admissions ward I left to become a general nurse. I was burnt out, jaded, and a little cynical.

I was also just twenty seven years old

Very few of our patients were the Conrad Jarrett type. (Conrad was the lead character in the book Ordinary People , the character played by Timothy Hutton  who was wracked with guilt and depression after his brother’s death) Conrad was cured by the intervention of a kindly old Psychologist after his discharge from psychiatric hospital. 

Our patients where the acutely ill psychotic and depressed. Patients that were admitted time and time again when meds were not taken, home stressors remained unchanged and when life too a turn for the worse. 

The community teams supported many so very well, but magical cures were few and far between.
Such is the nature of the beast which is mental illness. Running alongside those patients which enter the psychiatric system are millions that are just , well, psychologically damaged. We all…all of us fit into this category in one way or another. 
Most of us, through luck, self awareness, experience and with support, manage our demons and our weaknesses ourselves, but many others just get by. They often exist within a life of varying sadness and emotional pain. 
They don’t receive the benign insights from a kindly psychologist.
They don’t get the chance to have psychotherapy, or have a stretched community psychiatric nurse visit them once a month…
They are the people that live next door, the people you work with. The people you date.

I’ve meandered off a little here….and have not answered my own question. 
I left psychiatric  nursing because it overwhelmed me.
Plain and simple.

I left because I wasn’t fully cooked myself to cope with it
and I left because it saddened me. 






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