When the soul cries: emergencies in psychiatry

Every year I participate in a cardiopulmonary resuscitation training. We learn the life-saving initial actions to help the patient until the resuscitation team arrives. In patient care in psychiatry, there are also other emergencies. Emergencies can be as varied as there are people in the world.

When the soul is crying… This is a phrase I repeat to me before my inner eye, when a Patient is something that for me is not Comprehensible is doing. Because I believe that behind all of the aggressiveness of the patients towards others and self-show, suffered injuries. Only how to be a human sad, never to find solace? Who know no comfort, because there was no man, comforted him as a small child, and loved? A person this happened to you, has not learned to soothe themselves.

To psychiatric emergencies if a Patient is in a sense the device position in which he can no longer calm itself. I have seen two different behaviors:

Aggression against themselves

Self-harm, is in psychiatry, the most common type, internal pressure to reduce. This begins with the use of alcohol or drugs to numb themselves. There are people who eat nothing more, and in this way, at the end of no more force have to be sad. On the Station that I work, there are many patients who hurt themselves. You to wounds, cuts, burns, lacerations. The physical pain covered the emotional pain. It happens that a Patient consumed a lot of drugs and medications or deep cuts. The psychiatric Patient is a somatic Patient, and it must be surgically or intensive medical care.

Aggression against other

But when it comes to Attacks. The anger can be uncontrollable, that it comes to attacks among patients or even towards staff. Or is it afraid to fight back for someone – sometimes, though, there is no reason to do this. The fear can be so great that something is perceived as a threat, what is not seen from the outside even threatening. It comes to a violent escalation, there are alarm systems that we use to colleagues from other stations to help.

Professional Patient Care

In the Asklepios clinic North, there is now a training called ProDeMa. The is the Professional de-escalation management . In this training we learn how we can us in the patient care act, that it is a threatening Situation. We learn strategies as we have a calming effect on the patients can interact.

So I have the feeling that I can help patients make new experiences. Maybe you experience even sometime, that your soul may cry – but well-deserved consolation.

Photo: Katharina Voss