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Christian Smith, MD's avatar

Lovely write up, I often wonder about those who argue against the link between SMI-violence, specifically if they have had adequate exposure to state hospital or acute inpatient levels of care.

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Joshua E. Foster-Tucker's avatar

This was really enlightening. I shadowed (during the graveyard shift!) in the university hospital’s psych ED while in school for neuroscience; I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist. The docs I shadowed were all deeply committed to their pts’ wellbeing and integrity, but also asked me to position myself differently when we had a pt in psychosis come in. I wasn’t to sit and needed to stand by the door.

Meanwhile, my neuroscientist and psychologist lecturers taught that pts in psychosis, and others w other sympx on the spectrum, were no more dangerous than any other person. I had a hard time believing it. Especially when one of the first pts I saw was a very large teen in the full throes of psychosis with spiritual themes. He’d been brought by the police after knocking his mother, who he was perceiving as an angel, clean out. I realized it was quite a quaint, privileged nicety the professors were teaching and the emergency psychiatrists were disproving.

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