Have to mention the craziest call I’ve almost ever been on in 19 years in behavioral health. Happened about 5ish months ago, and might take two full posts to tell:
A lady around my age (early 40’s) was requested by her PCP to contact us for a mental health assessment. I show up at her apartment, and notice outside there are boxes and boxes piled up, sometimes 5-6 feet high. And lots of the packages are Amazon deliveries, still fresh in the package unopened. I had two thoughts: man you must have some saintly neighbors for these not to be stolen yet. And the other thought was I don’t think your ap’t complex admin is going to allow you piling this much shit outside your door…
Her front door is wide open, and she’s sitting in the living room in a thin tank top type shirt and her underwear, sitting on the floor. I walk in and greet her, and notice more boxes inside, including a huge 65+ in flatscreen tv still in the box in her living room. My next thought was “oh no, lady, I hope you can return this stuff once you get stable, because no doubt your spending spree is wrecking your finances”
We get to chatting and she’s clearly experience thought blockage, often just staring blankly not able to answer simple questions. And she’s also clearly experiencing internal stimuli and hallucinations, she’ll turn her head and appear to be listening to someone not there. She seemed to be into health and fitness and so to build rapport I got to talking about how both like the exact same powerbar
I eventually ask are you hearing voices or seeing things other’s don’t. And she says yes she sees a “hyper sexual” lady, who commands her to do things that she doesn’t like. That’s as much as she wanted to say about that. She sheepishly looks up at me and says “I might be manic, I have been on a bit of a shopping spree”, and I said “I can see that”. Then she says “I saw 3 different movies in the movie theater yesterday”
And in my head I’m thinking you must be crazy because no one does that shit. What is that like 6+ straight hours of movies? I could see if it was an LOTR marathon but otherwise nah. Then she says “then I lost my car”. I say “you left it at the movie theater?” She shrugs and says “can you help me look for it?”
I say no I can’t drive you around looking for your car. Instead I say look, you mention you think you are manic, you are experiencing hallucinations, you are overspending, why dont you let me take you to a behavioral health hospital? She says no thanks, she will meet with her naturopath doctor on Friday. She says the doctor told her to get off all her psych meds months ago and do a keto diet instead. I thought well I don’t believe that, but if that’s true, that doctor is a quack
So far pretty normal stuff for me….it’ll get a lot weirder in the next post:
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