You know those scenes in movies where the patient in the psych ward desperately insists that they’re not crazy, but everyone just rolls their eyes at them and their seemingly outlandish claims? Well, what if they’re actually speaking the truth?
TikToker @nursemali11 is sharing his hot take, which is that psych patients might be dismissed as “unstable,” but they’re the only ones who are seeing things clearly. Recently, he and his friend, who is also a nurse, were reminiscing about a day they had in the emergency room.
“The basis of the conversation was about three psych patients that we had in two days,” @nursemali11 explained.
“So, the first psych patient swore up and down that there were roaches and spiders crawling all over the room.”
When it comes to psych patients, nurses are taught not to entertain their bizarre thoughts. There were no bugs in the room, so they told him that they didn’t see anything and tried to orient him to what they saw in the room.
The patient claimed there were roaches on his leg and started swatting at them. TikToker @nursemali11 and his nurse friend gave him medication to calm him down.
After that, they noted in the chart that the patient was experiencing tactile and visual hallucinations. When the next patient came in, things began to get weird.
“This guy was in the room for about eight hours,” @nursemali11 said.
“The next patient came in after we transferred that guy out to the same room. Now, this patient does have a history of psychosis, but no hallucinations.”
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He walked into the room to introduce himself and saw that the new patient looked extremely frightened. She was curled up in a ball and asked him to kill all the bugs before starting any treatment. Again, he told her there were no bugs.
She began freaking out because she had a deathly fear of insects and couldn’t stand being in the room. So, they moved her to a different room. She was in the ER for about 10 hours.
When the third patient came in, the exact same thing happened. He saw spiders and roaches crawling around the room, just as the first two patients did.
Somehow, three patients with different diagnoses all saw the same thing. It got @nursemali11 thinking that he might be the one who was really losing his mind.
“Maybe they really tapped into something that we’re not really seeing, and we keep medicating them and suppressing their reality, which might actually be reality, and we might be the ones who are not tapped into it,” he concluded.
In the comments section, many TikTok users agreed with @nursemali11 and shared their own stories about people seeing things that aren’t there.
“Nurse for 17 years, these patients are seeing a dimension we don’t see,” stated one user.
“I’m a witch. I cannot tell you how many times I can also see the thing a homeless person is screaming/talking to on the sidewalk,” commented another.
“My grandpa was a psych tech in the ’50s and ’60s, and he swore that the psych patients were actually the most sane people, and everyone else was not,” added a third.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
