Psych Clinical

I realize I haven't said much about my psych rotation. Last night I talked to my friend and I realized that this is because I don't have the language for what is happening on the unit at this facility. In my "Psych Clinical Orientation" post (just look down a few posts) I talked about how glad I was that the unit is a voluntary research unit. I am still glad to be on the unit because 1)I think it's better than the alternative, which would be inpatient involuntary, which isn't really my speed, and 2)Because I think I needed to see what I'm seeing...even though I don't quite know why.

What I am seeing is a disproportionate number of black people involved in clinical trials for drugs that both have and have not been tested before, including pharmaceutical-grade cocaine (which is a drug that "has" been tested, vs drugs that are not yet FDA approved), and patients in experimental treatments that involve brain manipulation and a form of electric shock therapy. YES, there is "informed consent" on the unit - meaning the patients signed that they agree to participate. But repeatedly I am hearing from patients that they really didn't understand what they were signing (and the staff/researchers on the unit consider this to be a delusional moment related to their illness, ie: they understood, but they just don't remember that they understood!) Now, I am questioning exactly what informed consent really means...especially when someone is going through withdrawal or has an 8th grade level of education...according to Wikipedia, "The individual needs to be in possession of all of his faculties, such as not being mentally retarded or mentally ill and without an impairment of judgment at the time of consenting. Such impairments might include illness, intoxication, drunkenness, using drugs, insufficient sleep, and other health problems." A lot of what I see is troubling...

My friend asked me something about processing it all or coping or something (I don't remember what the exact question was) but now I'm thinking about it...

I know what I feel and why I feel it, but I have yet been able to articulate it, meaning I don't have the academic language for the problem that I am seeing. I have put up my reading list for 2007 and includes the book "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present." I think this book will help give me the language and a way to process this BS in a way that allows me to recover mentally and spiritually from what I am witnessing, especially in the absence of some much needed ongoing conversation about it.

In the mean time, when talking to my husband about my theory of not having the academic language to express my psych experience, he, with his knack for bringing me back to reality, asked me "why do you have to explain it in academic language, what's wrong with regular ol' language?!" I laughed so hard! But it's true. What's wrong the way I've been explaining it to him? Or the way I (half) explained to it to my friend? Really there's nothing wrong with it...and if I could get away with it - using an unimaginable number expletives (as I do with him) and my animated way of talking fast in half sentences, all breathless and sometimes hopeless (as I do with my friends)- the truth is, I would. But that just doesn't cut it in the classroom. After all, their is that pesky double consciousness to deal with; I rarely speak in class unless I have completely formulated the thought and have the appropriate (ie, acceptable) language to present my comment. Fair? NO. Necessary? ABSOLUTELY.

So, I am going to dive into "Medical Apartheid" slowly, and I hope that the history presented is accurate and that the language of the author gives me a way to voice what I'm feeling and recover from the trauma caused to my psyche from this rotation.