More First week in Psychiatry

1/31/2004 2:29 pm

I spent a couple of afternoons during my first week sitting in on Treatment Team meetings. This is when the Treatment team consisting of the psychiatrist, case managers, psychotherapist and charge nurses present updates on each case to the psychiatrist. A plan is formulated in terms of time to be spent on the unit, med changes, therapy changes, etc.

I was absolutely thrown offbalance by the horrible stories I heard in the Treatment Team meeting of the Children's Unit. I was told stories of drug-addict parents, abandoned children, physically and sexually abused children (one child was sexually abused by her grandfather from the age of 6 months to 4 years of age) and drug babies -- children affected by their mothers having taken drugs or alcohol or both during the pregnancy, or of mothers using damaging medication while breast-feeding their kids.

One 2 year old was found on the streets by police, wandering by himself. When asked what his name was, he said "Motherfucker." He'd probably been called that so many times, he actually thought it was his name!
I have been learning about attachment disorders. I was so moved that I went out and bought a couple of books about it to learn more.
On a more practical note, stuff in the basic sciences that relate to this rotation are:
DSM-IV criteria for diagnosis, Mental Status Exam, The psychiatric interview, and mechanism of action of all the drugs -- antipyschotics, anti-depressents particularly.
More later...