I was at the old Town Hall in Central (in Hong Kong), waiting for the lift. There was a lady there, possibly mid 40s, maybe older, who looked perfectly normal, apart from the fact she was standing by the doorway and shouting at someone. I thought she was shouting at someone behind me, so I didn't think too much of it at first. But when it looked like she was shouting at me, I checked behind me only to see that in fact there was nobody there, and it was now clear this woman was having an episode. As the minutes ticked by I became a bit more nervous as she seemed to get more agitated, and there was a rush of relief when the lift finally arrived and we filed in. Until I saw the shouting lady getting into the lift queue and into the lift as well!
She carried on shouting, and although she wasn't standing next to me, her outbursts were definitely becoming more and more aimed in my direction, especially as the lift became more and more empty the further up it went and passengers stepped out. Finally when it came to my floor there were only 4 of us in the lift. With a second rush of relief I left the lift, only to see that shouty lady decided to follow me out as well. I was there to attend choir practise, so I walked quickly to the room, the ladies were already singing, and shut the door firmly behind me. I was seriously worried crazy lady was going to come into the room and carry on shouting at me in front of all the choir ladies.
She didn't, actually she went quiet as soon as I left the lift. She wasn't there when I left two hours later either, so I don't know what happened to her. I was pretty shaken, I couldn't help thinking what if? What if she'd decided shouting wasn't enough and decided to attack me? What if she'd had a knife or some object like that? What should I have done? What could I have done?
As a pharmacist who taught a little on anti-psychotics I know a minimal amount on the actual condition of psychosis, and the drugs used to treat it. And for some reason this makes me feel like I should be in a position to have done something a bit more helpful other than running away. I believe when someone is psychotic there is not much point in trying to reason with them because they are at that moment divorced from reality. The only thing I possibly might have been able to do was to contact the local Mental Health centre or team and ask if they knew who she was and whether they ought to send someone over to take her away. But phone numbers of such teams are not really common knowledge, and in reality who is likely to bother? I wouldn't have known how to find out her name and whatnot either, I can't imagine I would have been able to extract that sort of information from her easily.
And what happened to her in the end? Did one of the town hall people sort her out after all, or did she come out of her psychosis and find her way home, wherever home for her might be?
The other thing was, even though I was shaken, I didn't feel I could tell anyone at the choir. Because I knew that a) it was a bit of a heavy topic, and b) they would not have known what to say. That's the thing about mental health stuff, people don't really want to talk about it, or don't understand it. I couldn't tell my husband about it either.
It's not the first time something like that has happened to me. The first time I was working in a hospital and I was passing by the mental health wing, where someone who was clearly a patient decided to verbally attack me. That was a bit different, I kind of knew the patient then.
Another time a mental health guy decided to fixate on my husband whilst we were sitting on the Underground in London. That was pretty scary actually, this guy looked kind of dangerous you know? And he followed us off the Tube, and even carried on following us out the station where fortunately there was a group of police officers hanging around, and they stopped him. I don't know what we would have done if they hadn't been there, probably run off and hid. No doubt my husband has completely forgotten about it by now.
And I have seen others, not directed at me, but at other random strangers.
- So clashes with psychotic patients may not be a common occurrence, but in my experience it happens often enough. I just want to know, is there a better way of dealing with it? What would you have done?
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