Medical Professionals Break Down The Scariest Mental Health Conditions They've Seen

Being in healthcare is not an easy journey.

I know so many people who work in so many different areas of the healthcare system, and they are constantly stressed out.

People who deal with humans with severe mental struggles have a special kind of empathy.

It can't be easy to watch people deteriorate in front of you.

Redditor lissie234 wanted to hear the horror stories from all of the mental health professionals reading, so they asked:

"Mental health workers of Reddit, what is the scariest mental health condition you have encountered?"

A Deep Cut

"Schizophrenia with command hallucinations. young guy on meds (refractory case) cut off his own penis. They sewed it back on, but I can’t imagine that it’s been the same since then."

- givemeonemargarita1

Season 5 What GIF by The OfficeGiphy

The Sweet Man

"Not a mental health worker, but adjacent. I was working at a homeless shelter, and a man who was staying with us was suffering from schizophrenia. His providers kept messing with his medications, switching him from one to another or not filling his prescriptions."

"He spiraled hard, stole a knife from the kitchen, and cut himself in his bed (he survived but holy s**t). Clients in the beds around him said they heard him arguing with himself, saying things like 'I won't hurt these people,' 'You can't make me,' etc. They felt that he did what he did to protect them."

"It was really scary and even sadder. He was a sweet man, he deserves better."

- lissie234

Forever

"I already commented, but I also had another disturbing case of a 7-year-old that his parents horrifically abused. They dropped him off at the hospital, unconscious, and just left him. He had over 80 bruises on his body. I am not really sure what they did to him. I went to see him every day until he was transferred to a group home, and the poor kid would only speak by screaming profanities. I was able to finally get him to talk a little before his transfer, but I just couldn’t help but imagine what he had gone through and wonder why. It was awful and will stay with me forever."

- Peeksneeka

Fighting for Help!

"One of my clients went from being okay one day to hearing stuff that wasn’t there, being afraid all the time, slowly going non-verbal and having stupors, strange mannerisms he hadn’t displayed before, and unable to do simple tasks (like drinking from a cup) the next day. He slowly grew more non-verbal, anxious, confused, and stiffened up. At one point, he would just walk in circles in his room, call you weird names, and not sleep for days on end."

"We have FOUGHT to get this kid professional help for 2 weeks, then he finally got admitted to the hospital. Turned out he had catatonia, which is a rather complex neuropsychiatric syndrome that disrupts how your brain works. They told us he was actually close to death at that point. He needed months of different therapies before he got better."

- JoyfulSuicide

Severe...

"Psych RN. Not the scariest, but another condition I think people underestimate is OCD. Severe OCD can be totally debilitating to the point where it can cost the person their job, their family, and their life. I have taken care of patients who present to the hospital with suicidal ideation because their OCD is so exhausting that they basically see no other way to get relief except to end their lives."

"People who are really particular about something and say 'Oh, that's just my OCD kicking in!' have no clue."

- soupface2

Baking Cookies

"I was in the field over 30 years ago. I think the scariest thing I saw was actually what broke me from the job. I was in CPS, and it was a case of a person who kept adopting and abusing, and the kids were abusing each other. Almost every person who worked on that case no longer works in the field anymore because it was just too much on the soul. I bake cookies now."

- jbug671

Endless...

"I was the director of operations at a mental health facility (I was property management, not psych worker). I saw a lot of sh*t on that job, but surprisingly to me, it was Munchhausen Syndrome. We had one woman that had it. She was this bottomless pit of need. It was weird to be in the same room as her as she instantly started wanting attention and sympathy. Endless demands for sympathy. There was something so unnerving about it."

- Spodson

Another Level of Heartache...

"Being on an adolescent psych floor is heartbreaking more than scary, but I wanted to post about it because it was really jarring to see how children’s mental illnesses present. I was around kids from 10-16 years old, and they almost all had some form of disordered eating because of all the ways they didn’t have control in their lives - they could control eating."

"We had one preteen who had been severely abused, they wouldn’t eat or speak to anyone for months, so they had to have an NG tube put in (tube that is inserted into the nostril down into the stomach so they can be tube fed). Another very sweet and polite kid that was totally pleasant on the unit had horrible command hallucinations constantly telling them to kill their family."

"Mental illness destroying lives is never easy to watch, though watching children struggling is another level of heartache."

- Cityofooo

Major Issues

"TBI. I can handle all the schizophrenics and bipolar in the world, they can be reasoned with and treated. But people with severe TBIs can develop major issues with lashing out uncontrollably and often. I've worked with several that will be sitting calmly and then suddenly punch people in the face for no reason at all. There's not a whole lot that can be done to help them, and it's really sad."

- lemonlimon22

Levels

"A certain type of auditory hallucinations. Think of voices coming in at 'levels.' If you heard someone say something on a TV show, you would be able to completely ignore it and think of it as nothing real. Then you have someone speaking directly to you, which you'd take more seriously."

"Then you have thoughts you may have and you can think about, like 'I should do laundry.' You can consider that and choose not to do it, even if it's clearly your own thought. Then there's the absolute instinctive things, coming in behind your ability to think about them. Like wincing or just walking. You just do it."

"I worked with people on all of those levels. For one person, though, the voices were at that lowest level. When they said to cut herself, she'd just do it. She couldn't stop it, she couldn't tell anyone it was about to happen; there was no conscious choice. The amount of medication needed to make it stop basically made her catatonic."

"So that sucked."

- 2beagles

Frozen

"Not a healthcare worker, patient, but catatonia is pretty scary. When I was going through electroconvulsive therapy, I’d see other patients go from completely frozen in time/non-verbal to suddenly talking and being animated again. The human brain is wild."

- Interesting-Bee-3166

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Possessed

"I was a psych nurse for a year, and I could name so many. I'd say that synthetic-marijuana-induced psychosis was frightening because it could happen to anyone. I'd see lifetime smokers, med students, gangsters, mothers, you name it. These are completely normal people who became extremely psychotic for weeks or months."

"One med student was found running around campus naked yelling that his roommate was going to kill him. These people were essentially ruining their lives until someone was able to force them to be admitted. One of the scariest parts is that a lot of them didn't remember anything from that time, maybe for the best."

"I honestly compare it to being possessed. The person you actually are is locked away somewhere else in the brain while this parasitic demon is running on pure visceral emotion."

- yungga46

Scary

"I am a psychologist/therapist here. Anorexia nervosa is one of the scariest mental health conditions I’ve worked with. The deadliest of all, too. There are a lot of people now struggling with EDs now, and it’s horrific and very hard for every single person living through this. However, the 'classic' purely restrictive anorexia nervosa can be close to psychosis. They starve themselves to death, and you can’t do anything about it. They don’t see themselves as sick, they don’t see their body as it is."

"Sometimes, it seems unstoppable. I also wonder how some people with anorexia survive so long without food and how they are able to over-exercise and under-eat for so long. Most people (thankfully) would pass out and just struggle too much to keep this thing going. It’s scary how their body can 'resist' this torture until they can’t anymore. They will die from not eating, absolutely unable to force themselves to eat and feeling like they absolutely want to live but can’t eat."

- abyss005

In the Neck

"My neighbor was a psychiatrist. He never divulged patient information but did share some odd cases. He told me that one woman had constant headaches brought on by all the needles she shoved into her neck and skull and everywhere else. He also had someone with a water drinking disorder, which can kill you."

- Iwentforalongwalk

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That is all a lot to absorb.

There is so much pain in this world.

I don't know how these people make it their life's work.

It truly is a calling.

Thank you all for your service.