Congratulations!!!

The public thing......that's what I was thinking about.

First, what you were talking about. The place I worked had a sub-acute stepdown unit thing and we had a number of forensic patients through it. Then we had a number of long-time forensic patients, a good number of whom were murderers. We also had court-ordered sex offenders and they could get scary at times. (One of the times looking young could be scary). A number of our men got DepoProvera shots to kill the urges. Many of our patients had been homeless until found and brought in to the facility through the courts so there was all kinds of substance abuse too. Eventually you get used to it and honestly I came to LOVE this man, my favorite patient I ever had, who had killed his mother and spent half his life in jail. He had nobody and so I make sure to honor his memory evey April 28, which is the day he died. He was the funniest person I've ever met and the one most in need of love.

Sometimes when substance abuse is the problem you can make such a difference just by providing a distaction. One man I remember who was there while waiting for a bed at the substance abuse place his parents wanted him to go to loved to just play Yahtzee with me. We worked on a lot of coping skills and stuff but always while playing Yahtzee. As we'd play he'd noticeably relax and seem to forget how bad he felt. Like all things there are challenges but I could tell stories from just my forensic guys for hours.

My big advice was to be sure your family or whoever would help you if you needed to go IP knows where to send you that you're privacy would be respected. My shaky plan for admission during that time was to go to another state (which I leave 90 minutes from) so that I wouldn't be IP with my patients. Obviously you wouldn't have that with adolescents but you could have staff rotate through and it could be awkward. I had a list of all the places that our facility sent people and made sure my mom and pdoc knew those places were off limits.

I'm glad you applied. I think you'll like it. It is really a fun area to work in and one that nearly every you feel like you made a difference, even if it was just unlocking a door to give out art supplies when people were anxious in the evening. Good luck!