Anything you'd like to know about my 10 years working in a mental hospital?

It was a state mental hospital. It had a civil commitment section (homeless people brought in by police, indigent mental patients whose families couldn't care for them) and it had a forensic section (people serving prison terms considered mentally ill or not guilty by reason of insanity). I worked as a teacher, first adolescents for 5 years, then adults for 5 years. I have been retired for 4 years.

I'm asking this because I'm writing my memoirs of my career to be given to my friends and wondered what, if anything, people might want to know about it.

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greenmountaingal · 70-79, F

GjOf3, due to fear of lawsuits, the staff are rarely abusive with patients nowadays. Some staff people are not kind and respectful with patients but most are. Remember, patients can sue but staff cannot. And when patients are sent to a state mental hospital in my state, they're automatically assigned a free attorney. In my 10 years, I know that one staff person got fired for exploiting patients (he tried to seduce some of the adolescent girls).

As for sex among patients.....among civil commitment patients who had grounds privileges, affairs, often volatile ones, were very common.

Among forensic patients (prison side of hospital) the men were separated from the women, as in any prison, and patients were supervised carefully so there was very little sex except the occasional gay,affair between roommates which was not entirely forbidden but often discouraged.

Among the adolescents I taught for 5 years...YOWIE!!! it was a constant job to keep them from having sex any way anywhere they could get away with it. They hid in corners, behind bookshelves, attempted constantly to sneak into restrooms together...it was a tiring job to supervise them. All their love affairs, whether they managed to have sex or not, were very short and intense and nearly always led to violent hatred in a day or two. Yes, with the teens it WAS a problem!