Mental Illness and Addiction: Lessons from the County Hospital Inpatient Psychiatric Ward

There is often a stark difference in how people interpret their first exposures to physical illness versus mental illness and addiction medicine. Many times, there is a tendency to sympathize with physical illness but separate ourselves from mental illness and addiction. I’ve slowly learned to see myself in each of my patients, regardless of diagnosis. In this experience article, I describe what it is like to interact with and care for psychiatric patients and how my thoughts on their care changed during my inpatient psychiatric rotation.