My only expectation for any nurse, psych or oncology, is that they act professionally and meet my medical or psychiatric needs appropriately. I try to give them each respect at all times and I keep my demands to what I absolutely need. On the psych unit I'd leave it up to the staff to know the difference between true illness and bad behavior in individual patients. Illness needs to be treated. Bad behavior should be addressed and stopped. I think psych patients have a heightened need for empathy and compassion. It's the nature of our suffering. We have to accept though that this need cannot always be met on a unit of 40 other people with the same needs.

I think a solution to this gap in empathy is to have inpatient individual therapy. This gives we patients one person we can feel really hears us and can report our needs back to staff and our psychiatrists. I know it's an expense for some facilities, but individual therapy sessions during the week could go a long way toward reducing the tension between needful patients and overworked staff.