National Center for Mental Health

I am still alive. I may have gone MIA for quite a long time but I'm still here and ready to share my experiences and the things I've learned in school and in our hospital duty.

The last memorable duty that I've had was in the National Center for Mental Health. We were assigned at the forensics pavilion. At first, I was really scared. My hands were all clammy and shaking when our clinical instructor announced who our patients would be for this rotation. With respect to the patient's privacy and confidentiality, I will not be mentioning our patients' names. So anyway, the longer we stayed there, the more comfortable I was talking to my patient. It was not as bad as I thought.

They're just like other individuals who got sick. As what our instructor told us, they are really not different from people who have hypertension, diabetes, etc that have maintenance drugs. It just so happens that the signs and symptoms are more evident as compared to other medical conditions.

Our four-day duty there made me realize a lot of things. The most important was that it made me feel grateful and made me realize that I should not be constantly whining. No matter how troubled I feel when it comes to my payday loans or deadlines that I have to meet, or even simple things like traffic, I know that I'm still lucky that my family and friends are all healthy.