The Rotary Balita no. 780 (September 15, 1955)

The last meeting of the Inner Wheel Club held on September 8, 1955, commemorated a National Health Week and was held at the National Mental Hospital. It was a most interesting program in which the patients of the hospital displayed handicrafts and presented several dances, among them the "Lavandera Dance," "Tinikling" and "Balitaw." The music was furnished by the hospital band.

At the presidential table, and in the absence of Millie Lim, Bertel Kaufmann presided and introduced the guest speaker, Dr. Jose Clarin, who spoke on the trials and tribulations in a Mental Hospital. The interesting speech of Dr. Clarin is reproduced in full below:

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS IN THE NATIONAL MENTAL HOSPITAL

By JOSE M. CLARIN, M.D.
Asst. Chief, National Mental Hospital

This is the "home of the living dead," according to those who gather their information second and third-hand; and all who live within these walls—excepting the "villainous personnel—are the poor, mistreated inmates. That's one side of the coin. A single flip and here's the other side.

Twenty doctors, 85 nurses and 351 ward attendants and guards in daily danger of losing their lives among 3,400 lunatics. There's the graphic history of tragedy, knock-out blows, gushed scalps, bitten fingers and torn uniforms suffered by the supervising minority.

One Out Is Bad Enough

It takes only one insane person outside the hospital walls to complicate the life of the family and the feelings of a battalion of relatives as well as the general peace of the neighborhood. Imagine what three thousand four hundred of them can do, all shut up together in one-third enough space, most of them with a general grudge against the world and a special one against the doctor, whose medicine is refused as poison, whose interest is misconstrued as a desire to do harm and whose face may become identified as that belonging to a former enemy, reviving the old urge within the patient to "rise up and make the world safe for democracy."

It's a thrilling adventurous thing to work among the insane; and daily contact with lunatics bring that feeling of being caught in a charmed circle with fear as well as interest gripping the heart. Without power to reason, some of the patients act and strike treacherously, their minds not so impaired that they lack cunning, yet too impaired for them to be held responsible. Among them we have no way of foretelling just when their "whirlwind of misdirected energy" will blow our way.

Soldier Goes For Doctor

To give an inkling of the unexpectedness of the encounters with the insane and what those entrusted with their care must face day after day, night after night, I shall, with the utmost sincerity and plainness, narrate "the other side of the story," harrowing experiences varying from comedy to tragedy, in which the employees of the institution were the victims of the "poor inmates."

An experience of my own naturally, left a deeper impression on me than the records of other doctors' mishaps. One of the patients, a burly constabulary soldier who had been operated on for a carbuncle on his back earlier in the morning, approached me in the afternoon in a matter of fact way, requesting me to examine the operated part and have the dressing changed.

I did so, asking him to wait a bit until I could tell the nurse to make the necessary change of dressings. Then, absorbed in the various needs of about 150 patients, I continued my round of inspection, only to glance back after taking a few steps. M hair tingled. There a step behind me, was the patient, his jaw muscles rippling under the skin as he gritted his teeth, his eyes fiery with hate and his right hand raised to plunge a sharpened spoon handle into my back.

Then Says "Excuse Me"

Instinctively, I ducked to one side, trying to dodge the blow. As a result, we both "hit the dust," and on the floor grappled and struggled like a wild beast and its cornered prey. Attendants and nurses peeled the patient from me, most to my relief. An "inventory" of myself after the skirmish netted a jacket torn beyond repair, blood oozing from a wound at the left side of my neck and scratches and bruises in the most surprising places.

A few hours later, I visited the patient in his isolation room. To my amazement, he was extremely apologetic and repentant and sincerely so. What was there to say? "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

The Bashful Lover

Almost as disagreeable was a love-making scene between a female patient and myself, with me fighting like a tarpon and the patient hanging like a veteran fisherman. Emerging from the nurses' office in the female pavilion after attending an emergency case, a patient leaped at me, got an octopus hold around my neck and started climbing upward with her knees. No amount of threshing on my part could loosen her.

The "love scene" was greeted boisterously and hilariously by her sister inmates, who egged the "passionate beauty" on. I was weak and dizzy before the attendants could rescue me, for the patient reeked of disinfectant, urine, sweat and bad teeth, and her protestation of love engulfed me in a gust of foul breath.

Another patient got the topsy-turvy idea that I was her Prince Charming on a white charger. With brazen audacity she confided to the nurses and attendants that I was always in her dreams and forever in her heart and that on moonlit nights I serenaded her. Unable to cure her of her delusion or to hush her, I tried to pass it off nonchalantly, in spite of the fact that she would burst into a rage and yell unsavory names at me, should she see me attending other patients.

One afternoon while I was conducting some visitors through the pavilion in which she was quartered she screamed and ran toward me. She grabbed my long white gown that goes with the uniform and could only be torn away with shreds of it remaining in her hands. It took the lady physician, the nurses and attendants to pacify her and when we left she was still "speaking her mind," a magnificently realistic exhibition of the saying, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Twice I have been accused of kidnapping. One patient filed his complaint with the Secretary of Health and the other patient with the PCAC. In both instances I have to waste precious time just to prove that the alleged "kidnappings" were nothing more but the products of deluded minds.

Those were some of my experiences and, because they were my own, I have been better able to describe them. But the other members of the personnel have their troubles too, some of them even funnier or more tragic than my own.

One day a husky, heavy-jawed patient assaulted former Medical Superintendent Vergara in the main office, and the fantastic grudge he had nursed for long in his bosom lent superhuman strength to his arms. By the time other members of the staff could dash to the superintendent's rescue, the patient has already beaten a tattoo on the cement wall with the superintendent's head.

One Round — No Gong

Dr. T. Joson, one of the oldtimers in the hospital, now retired, was himself the victim of a surprise attack—after years of experience practically reading addled brains. Dr. Joson was not alone at that time He was making the usual rounds with other medical officers, who might have seen the attack coming if the patient had been less swift and less innocent, for the patient approached quietly and easily as if to shake hands, a common habit among the insane some of whom shake hands hundreds of times for no reason at all it seems. Just as the doctor was to clasp hands with him, one of the many things a physician must do to humour their patients, the fellow drew his fist and throwing all his weight behind the drive, gave Dr. Joson a sledge-hammer blow. Dr. Joson was sent sprawling on the floor, almost unconscious, and the patient was about to follow the fist blow with a kick when the doctors grabbed him Investigation revealed that he believed that Dr. Joson was a man who used to make malicious and defamatory insinuations against him — which may also have been a delusion. At any rate his effort to vindicate his honor gave Dr. Joson a week off to doctor his face down to normal size again.

He "Banked" His Shot

Dr. Jose G. Cruz, now deceased, almost joined the "innumerable caravan" much earlier, when a confused patient entered his office, paused a bare instant and then laid hands on a chair and began to swing it around as lightly as a club. With the unwieldy object a sure instrument of death in a lunatic's hands, the room cleared in no time of other personnel, who had made good use of their heels. Dr. Cruz was left alone at the mercy of the enraged patient who was mumbling to himself and staring about him like a cornered rat.

Unable to wrap the chair around the doctor's neck because of the desk that stood between them, the patient dropped the chair and grabbed the heavy triangle sign, hurling it with all his might at the doctor. The sign just missed the doctor, but rebounded from the wall and struck the doctor behind the ear. The record reads that "help came in due time and the patient was apprehended;" it was one time that due time was a long time, at least for the doctor, who also got a week off to "lick his wounds."
Dr. Jaime Castañeda have also a close call with death when one afternoon, a court case patient who was harboring the delusion that the doctor was the main cause for his non-release from the hospital suddenly went into his office and treacherously stabbed him several times on the chest with 3 sharpened piece of iron that he was able to wring out from his bed. Fortunately, however, the wounds did not go deeper to involve the heart and lungs, otherwise the result would have been tragic.

The Girls Get No Gentle Treatment

Gallantry is not particularly noticeable among the insane, for woman physicians are as likely to get it in the neck as men physicians. Dr. Pardo was bitten in the back by a maniac while studying case records, and another doctor, Dr. Vitug-Fulgencio was dragged around by the hair and kicked, sustaining scratches on her face and other parts of the body. Another lady physician had to take an unscheduled bath and change of clothes when one day while making her round she was unceremoniously given a "bath" of urine and feces.

Even more exposed to danger than the physicians are the nurses and attendants who must take personal care of the patients. A female nurse while making her round in the male wards was mistaken by a patient to be his loving wife. Without further ado, the patient wrapped his arms about her, clinging like a leech, and only by force could other employees separate him from the nurse.

Another nurse busy about the many tasks of nursing work in the hospital, was given a free exhibition of the most approved "method of warfare" among her sex when an infuriated female patient grabbed the nurse by the hair, scratched her face and tore her uniform to tatters.

Miss Leticia Bengzon (now Mrs. Clarin), the former occupational therapist of the female department, was engrossed in guiding the efforts of the semi-cured insane trusted to sew and embroider. A hard blow "below the belt" almost knocked her out. "For a minute I couldn't breathe, much less move or talk. It seemed as if the world had crumbled at my feet and everything was darkness," she said.

Sometimes Not So Funny

Male Nurses Valdes and Mapula both had close calls. Without warning or provocation, a patient slashed Valdes' abdomen with a razor blade. The wound fortunately did not go deep enough to involve the abdominal contents. Mapula turned white with fear and run for his life when a patient tried to stab him with an improvised dagger of electric wire. Two of our male barbers have similar close calls in their efforts to make the patients well-groomed. Barber Villegas was stabbed in the arm when the patient he was cutting hair suddenly grabbed it from him. The wound was quite serious that he has to spend several weeks in the Orthopedic Hospital. Barber Legaspi's back was slashed with a razor when a patient who ran amuck grabbed it from him. He has to lick his wounds for more than a week.

Other treacherous assaults by the unbalanced patients are of daily occurrence. Here an attendant is struck on the head with the edge of a porcelain plate, leaving a gaping wound that bleed profusely. There a female attendant, feeding a patient has the flesh of her finger bitten off by the patient who swallows it with the rest of the food. In another ward a stone is upturned, and soon another attendant is having first aid treatment for a scalp wound.

Death Strikes

Less fortunate was an attendant several years ago, who while distributing food was beaten into unconsciousness with a slab of wood. The attendant never regained consciousness, expiring a few hours after the incident. The Crisostomo oval in front of the administration building was named after him.

Attendant Moises Misa while tending his patients on occupational therapy quarrying adobe stones, was treacherously stabbed by one of his patients on the chest piercing his heart. He died hours later despite heroic surgical intervention. He left a widow with several children.

Hard On The Ego

It's the usual thing, if you are a doctor in the mental hospital, to include "outside curriculum" in the daily round. The round is yours, but the curriculum is the patient's, and you can be expected to be maligned, insulted, spitted upon, have urine and feces thrown on your face or have any other indignity practiced upon by these unfortunate wards of the government who in their loss of contact with the world of realities become oblivious to the most elementary rules of decency in their dealings with fellowmen.

For the care and management of the insane, with the end in view of their mental and social rehabilitation, is no easy matter; usually it is a disheartening thing, for we deal with people whom we cannot reach, people who are drifting in a private world of their own creation, people who are no longer conscious of external life and activity, finding in fantasy an outlet for repressed longings and pent up emotions that have been piling through the years.

The Doctor's Credo

The majority of the patients will never be totally restored to their former sane selves; but their confinement can be made less heavy for them if they can at least be made to feel that they are still part of life and the living of it, and that there are still such things for them as kindness, consideration, respect, and friendship.
To gain these ends, the earnest must strive against overwhelming odds, calling constantly upon patience tolerance, love, sympathy and understanding of human behavior. Every task can be made big or small by the doctor's own attitude. There are so many "do's" and "don'ts" of self-discipline.

I must be patient, for instance, when a particularly filthy inmate refuses to be given a bath, preferring to wallow in primitive filth. I must not scold if he noisily refuses to eat his food, having the false belief that the food has been poisoned. I must not grow irritable if he refuses to wear clothes, and strips himself to his "birthday clothes" every time his hands are free to do so. I must let my sense of humor come to my rescue if when I give him a bed he refuses to lie on it, preferring to creep under it.