Today was one of those days that work got to me. I work with adults who have mental illness. It's usually great days where it's fun and interesting. The last two days were intense. Strong delusions, trying to break delusions, people playing into delusions. Breaking a delusion isn't easy they're ingrained so deeply and with one of our residents reinforced by institutionalization since the age of 17. She's 61 years old now that's 44 years of pure failure to help her. She's someone with proper help she could have gotten better, she could have lived on her own and with the help of out patient therapy and medication have had a relatively normal life.
This woman thinks she has a husband, who was a fellow resident at the institution. She believes he's her Doctor and won't have any medical attention from anyone but him. He comes at night to do these medical appointments. She suffers from auditory and visual hallucinations. The auditory is hearing voices from her 'husband', others talking or God. Visual hallucinations range from seeing a dog in the house to the 'molecular foundations of all the world' and 'the writing on the wall' as in how rules appear in institutions. Illness is one thing but delusions created completely from living 'under care' makes me sick.
Today we were going to go to PetSmart and visit the animals (all of our residents love animals) but she physically could not go because the delusional writing she saw said she couldn't and that the world would end if she attempted to. Attempting to break these delusions is the hardest part. It's just sitting there and fighting for hours and days every time she brings up a delusion saying it's not real over and over and over again simply having hope that one day it'll sink in.
I'm out of hope today. I just hope I come up with a little by morning.
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