Psychiatry - Day #1 at the jail

I finished my first day working at the jail. It's a strange place because it's smack in the middle of downtown and looks just like any of the other high-rise office buildings in town. It's unique in that it is a city/county/federal jail. Because of it's proximity to the federal court house, it houses your general drunk college students and your high profile guys like the Una-bomber.

In general, it was a pretty fun day. I got a free cafeteria style lunch and a tour of the prison system. The day felt like Shawshank meets escape from Alcatraz. Got a complete tour of the legal system from booking and awaiting trial to sentencing. It was a real eye-opening experience. After reading studies like the Stanford Prison Experiment, one expects the people who work there to be hard-asses. In general, the cops working at the jail were the nicest, most considerate fellows I've met in the health system. They're really considerate of the mental issues of the inmates and give them a good amount of slack from disciplining. Speaking of disciplining, it's a lot like training a dog. They feed bad prisoners a "doggy diet", which is basically ground protein. They're given the meal for 2 days, and then given regular diet every third day. That way, your system never has a chance to get used to the diet, so I hear the prisoners smart quick pretty quickly.

But I digress...my favorite part of the tour was a room displaying all the tools made by the inmates. There were the standard knifes made from toothbrushes and disposable razor blades. The more interesting implements included a club made from braided garbage bags and a choking wire made from the wires within a toothpaste tube. Pretty smart if you ask me.

About the mental health system. Some 20% of the inmates at the prison are chronic mental health patients. They kind of pop back and forth from the sac county mental health treatment center to the prison. They are genuinely fucking crazy. We've got a lady who is afraid to eat because she is afraid her eyeballs are gonna fall out. My patient is totally manic and start yelling that he was gonna molest little children the minute he got out. We had to get him the hell out of the general population so that he wouldn't get his ass beat down. Man...seriously. Don't do drugs. It'll fuck you up.

Anyhow, my team is pretty cool. The MDs I work with. One looks like Peter Griffin, one looks like and dresses like a cholo, and the last one is your run-of-the-mill shy/nice asian guy who looks just like Cow. I think this is gonna be a fun month. More to come.

-bender