I’ll share mine first.
I had a psych patient one night pile shitty toilet paper next to his toilet overnight. Normally my psych nurse brain would consider this a symptom of disorganized psychosis, EXCEPT!
I remembered an aita post about a conflict between a western OP and his middle eastern roomate trying to figure out why their roommate put their shitty toilet paper in the trash. Turns out many middle eastern toilets can’t handle toilet paper.
Oh and inpatient psychiatry doesn’t provide freestanding hard plastic trashcans (turns out they make great clubs). We gave him one of our freestanding paper bag trashcans and problem solved.
TL;DR; Reddit expanded my cultural knowledge enough to differentiate disorganized psychotic behaviors from a genuine cultural difference. Thanks reddit!
Anyone have any similar examples of positive exchanges of knowledge or culture using reddit?
Oh and especially when they think they understand genuine psychiatric or psychological terms! Take this from a halfway professional!
Ex: They ALL think they know what “gaslighting” actually is from maybe watching a movie one time or reading a Wikipedia article or just reading enough Reddit posts…
I know enough even as a psych nurse to relay in report that like “this is what the patient is saying. These are the ways both them and their so-called social support persons could all be lying about this. I am so grateful that the final verdict on any of this is falling above both our paygrades. just letting you know about what’s up in case it rolls up on the unit today.”
Professionally we don’t speculate any more than preparing for the fallout of possibilities. I let you know as a coworker to take extra precautions to play it extra close to the chest if our patient’s possibly abusive ex calls.
That’s what we do. We prepare and prepare each other for contingencies. Y’alls social media speculations are just entertainment.