i really hope people will forgive me for not having updated for the past week and a half but i've been so busy of late that sitting down to type this is the first time i've sat down today, and probably the first time i've drawn breath in even longer.

working on a psychiatric intensive care unit is so much busier than i'd ever imagined, the rates of admission and discharge are pretty high, and as if that wasn't enough i had to deal with my first missing patient (who thankfully turned up, and is by this time hopefully on their way back to the unit). i should probably explain a little bit for those people who aren't really up on modern psychiatric hospital layouts - the psychiatric intensive care unit (or picu) is a special locked ward where people who are very acutely ill are cared for when they can't be managed on an open (or unlocked) ward, usually all the patients on this type of ward are held there under sections of the mental health act, for a variety of reasons a list of which is probably about as long as my arm - the short version of which is that the patients there are generally ill rather than bad, and in most cases the locked door is to protect them from themselves rather than to protect society from them. there's usually set goals for a patient to achieve in order to be discharged from a picu and from there they go onto open wards if they still need hospitalisation and occasionally patients are discharged back into the community, into their own homes with a support package from community nurses and social workers. it's quite an interesting area really and one i'd hope to think about working in full time someday.