One of the interns Joe often sits down and has informal talks with the patients in the Psych ward. Joe has a personal interest in getting to know each patient outside of what is written in their charts. This way the patients may develop the feelings that Joe generally cares about their welfare and is more liable to open up and express themselves during a group or individual counseling session, or if anything is on their mind, their thoughts, ideas and even their life’s philosophy. Yes, it is hard to believe that mentally ill people who have schizophrenia, unrealistic and psychotic delusions have any philosophy concept. Yet many of them do. One needs to understand that some mental illness is a development, it may come to some early in life, or later in life, or as a result of head trauma, or an unpleasant experienced; whether that experience is real or imagined. The medical community has not pin pointed the causes but there are lots of theories out there which actually holds water if one should study it.

 Mike is one of the colorful characters in the Psych ward. Mike opened up to Joe and started to tell him his personal experience. Mike’s personal experience is kind of interesting. Mike has been in and out of various Psych wards since childhood https://truegeorge.com/2016/07/24/liaisons/). Mike’s mental illness developed early in life. You may say that it developed before his life started. During his time in the womb Mike’s mother was abusing drugs. Whatever drug she took was passed onto Mike. Ultimately Mike was born addicted to crack.  By the time Mike was in Kindergarten he was first diagnosed as being semi-retarded and was already spending time in a Psych Ward. According to Mike it seems his mother cleaned up some because he said out of all the children in the Psych Ward he was the only one whose mother visited; and she used to visit every day. Mike said my mother used to visit me every day and when she came she used to bring presents for the other children and play with them; she felt sorry that their mothers never came to see them. The other kids called my mother “mama”.

By the time Mike reached his teenage years he was stable enough to live outside the Psych ward, but unfortunately his mother passed away. He went to live with his aunt down south. The aunt and her husband owned a restaurant and Mike and his cousins worked in the restaurant. During his early twenties Mike returned to the city and started living a life of hustling. He started working for a drug dealer selling drugs and running errands for the dealer. Mike said that the dealer used to walk around with a gun, beat people up and threaten to kill them. Mike said he used to give me the gun and send me and a couple of guys to collect money from people that owed him. One day I got into an argument with someone, I was so mad I was wanted to kill him. I went to the dealer to get the gun; the dealer refused to give it to me. The dealer told everyone else not to give me anything. The fucking dealer talked all that shit about killing, but refused to give me the gun when I wanted to kill someone. What mike doesn’t realize is that the  drug dealer did him a favor by not giving him the gun when he felt like killing someone.

Mike did not elaborate on how many times he got arrested. But since his mental capacity is impaired he fell in the category of not being charged or convicted because of being mentally unfit to stand trial. He becomes part of the vicious cycle of being held in the lock up for a couple of days after being arrested, brought before a judge, the judge rules he is mentally unfit for trial, spends a couple of more days or weeks in the lock up then on court order shipped to the Psych Ward where he will spend a couple of months before being released back into the community. When he commits the next crime the cycle repeats (https://truegeorge.com/2016/08/17/vicious-cycle/ )

But in a strange twist of fate, there are consequences for patients in the Psych Ward if they commit crimes against staff?  Psych Ward staff face the possibility of being assaulted. This is an occupational hazard of working with the mentally unfit. Assaults come in the form of gestures, verbal, physical or sexual. Mike recently returned back to the Psych Ward after spending a couple of months on Rikers Island after being charged with sexually assaulting a staff member (https://truegeorge.com/2016/07/24/liaisons/).

As it stands the lock up have its culture. Mike revealed that he became a member of the BLOOD nation. Mike says the motto is MOB (Money Over Bitches). Mike goes to his room and brings out a legal pad. Mike says, I’m not supposed to show anyone this, it would get me killed. They wrote it down for me so that I can remember it. Mike takes a cocktail of medication which compromises his short term recall abilities. What was written revealed some information about the BLOOD.

BLOOD is an acronym for Brotherly Love Overrides Oppression & Destruction.

There was a picture of the Star of David with a number 5.

There were symbols written down:

MOB= Money over bitches

31= blood love

23= get him

SMM= sex money murder

OG=Original gangster.

And other acronyms and symbols that have meaning to members of the BLOOD. Mike mentions about the different types of hand gestures. Hell, it looks like this gang stuff  emulates the secret societies who have coded hand gestures, coded language, symbols, signs, culture even rites such as the Masons. Strange how a society breeds its own monsters.

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