can you 'look' psychotic?? If someone is just sitting there not saying anything, can you even tell?
I was at A&E a few days ago. There was a young doctor there and then the senior one came in to do a quick assessment of the usual can you feel this/bend that. I guess they were also assessing if they needed to force me to go over to the psych ward or if they could let me go.
The old doctor didnt ask any questions or say anything to me at all. He did his tests and then told the young one that I didnt look psychotic so all was fine and dandy.
Was this him just being hasty/careless? Because you cant tell if someone looks depressed by their outer appearance, there are things you can hide.
Hi EMH,
I'm sorry you had this kind of invalidating experience in A&E. I'm not an expert but I don't think anyone can make this kind of assessment of your mental health without asking you about your symptoms. It makes me cross when anyone says something like they don't "look" depressed/anxious/psychotic etc. etc. As different people can portray their mental illnesses in different ways.
I think it maybe happens more often in an A&E setting as the doctors can be very busy and try to make assessments quickly (not an excuse) and they are also likely to not be mental health specialists.
"this is the room where you don't have to be brave"
Like you say you can't tell if someone has X mental illness just by looking at them.
You could take a picture of 100 people with the same mental illness and most of them wouldn't look "mentally unwell" whatever that is meant to look like.
I think one of the problems with A&E docs is that they get so little MH training,
that they can be so misinformed/stigmatized about there ideas on MH. One of them told me once a number of years back they only got like a couple of days on it. If this is correct it's very poor.
'Cause I'll always remember you the same.
Oh eyes like wild flowers within demons of change ♥
It reminds of being in hospital, a lady there was wandering around saying someone's trying to read her thoughts through the tv. And I remember thinking, if that was happening to me, I wouldn't tell anyone. Therefore, she would appear psychotic, and I wouldn't.
I used to refuse meds in hospital too, and for a long time they went with it and just tried to talk me round, but eventually I had a panic attack and when they tried to give me meds, I refused them, and then he threatened a depot, and I started crying about them trying to poison me, trying to recondition me and steal away what makes me, and I just wanted to go home because I want to be me. It was a line of thinking that had been stressing me out for over a month being trapped there. They started me on anti-psychotics after that.
They don't know what's going on in someone's head until that person speaks about it, and if that person doesn't, they can't know. It annoys so much that they decide this means you're "okay".
yeah exactly. I seldom say anything extra from my head unless they specifically ask a question directly related to that.
It was just the way he waved me off, you know like when you cant be arsed with a piece of work and just do the bare minimum and are like 'yeah, whatever, thats fine' with that hand gesture. swear i saw him make that same gesture.
im glad the young doctor was nice otherwise I probably would have just left.
I think there are some people where some people have more external signs of their psychosis and can "look psychotic" however there are others where all the symptoms are internalised and it is very poor practice to assume that everyone falls into the first camp.
I bottle my thoughts up because I'm scared of getting sectioned. It's happened many times where my support staff thought I was doing okay but then suddenly become psychotic rapidly, it's because I can't control the intrusive thoughts no longer and I just blurt my suspicions and paranoia out. I'm not with the mental health team (I'm with the LD team) and every time I have been taken to A&E the mental health team assessing me have been very dismissive and and reluctant to section me because I can't access their service so they release me to wait for a learning disability assessment. Last time I got discharged by them severely hurt myself ended up in the section 136 mental health suite for the night then taken to a learning disability hospital. I think mental health is rubbish compared to LD services, You have to be really unwell to get sectioned in MH and at breaking point. The LD teams act much faster.
I don't know, I've been told I have "crazy eyes" when I've been unwell and lost chunks of memory- apparently I stare really intently and don't blink as much. Or something, my husband told me after a really bad episode in hospital (I thought nurses were hiding my bowls and spoons. So not quite as exciting as being poisoned by medication, but I have no memory of the week.)
I always get told that I "look better" after an episode, but I'm not sure what that really means. I've also been told "you don't look very well" when acutely mentally unwell, but again, not really sure what is meant by that.
I certainly don't think it's always the case that people look unwell when struggling mentally. It seems a bit of a strange thing to think.
“Our defeats are softened and our victories are sweetened because we did it together.” - Toby Ziegler.
She said that she's learnt there are certain observable traits that are big indicators of psychosis - and sometimes when people say 'psychotic thoughts' but don't have the observable characteristics etc as well then they differentiate them.
she doesn't explain it fully: but she said like the stare, the flat effect on the face, the way they move or walk and all that stuff.
(by they I'm talking about the patients where she works, not derogatory. you know what i mean)
This reminds me of going to see a new GP at a new practice. I told her that I was being stalked and watched on CCTV cameras by my lecturer, who was also "directing" me to places and sending me messages. She referred me to a psychiatrist but let me walk out the door with an antihistamine to help me sleep and a follow-up appointment the next week.
The following week she was off sick and I saw another GP who looked at me and didn't know what to say. I told him about my mother having terminal cancer and he said something along the lines of "You'll have good days, you'll have bad days" and after relaying the psychosis to him he let me walk out as well.
I don't blame the doctors, I blame myself for not going to hospital and asking to be sectioned. I didn't look psychotic - I looked anorexic and sounded completely insane. To their credit they did refer me to a psychiatrist. A few months later I was sectioned after my counsellor intervened (I was accusing her again) and sent the early intervention team to my house to put an end to the madness.
Last edited by Cheryl88 : 26-01-2018 at 08:04 PM.
Reason: Spelling mistake.
My supported living care manager always says she can tell when I'm ill (psychotic) when I'm having a episode. She always says it. She's actually a very good manager.
