Noticed something this week that has been bothering me.....
Where I live, we observe the annual Mental Health Screening Day. Last Tuesday, September 27th, I attended the training to prepare to conduct a screening at a nearby assisted living facility. (There's been at least one completed suicide at that facility.) During the training, I was informed that instead of my assisting with the Bingo Game, I would go knocking door to door and conduct the mental health screenings with each resident who answers the door and consents. (BTW, the person conducting this training is my former facilitator of the support group I used to attend. I stopped attending because I was getting the very REAL sense that she was just NOT LISTENING.)
I informed the "trainer" that I know quite a few people at the assisted living facility and it would present a serious ethical dilemma for me to go knocking on their doors, requesting to conduct a mental health screening, when I know them and they know me. The trainer made an off-hand comment and nothing more was said about the issue.
One week later at the assisted living facility, as I was meeting with the trainer's supervisor to get last minute instructions, I was, again, informed that I would be knocking on doors. I brought up my ethical issue of knowing residents and how awkward that would be for both the residents and myself to be conducting a mental health screening under these circumstances. I also made it a point of stating that I brought up this same question during the training the previous week and I repeated my question...."What is the best way to address this?" The supervisor decided that I would score the paperwork and the interns would knock on the doors. (Works for me!) I felt annoyed that, once again, I mentioned a concern to this (now-former) facilitator and, once again, SHE WAS NOT LISTENING! (This confirmed my decision to not return to the support group as long as she is in charge.)
Last night, we were conducting Part Two of the Mental Health Screening at a local grocery store. The (now-former) facilitator was there and she was acting very frostily toward me. (Made me wonder if her boss gave her an ass-chewing for not listening to me and not reporting the ethical situation to her.) Then ANOTHER ethical situation reared its ugly head as a direct result of this individual NOT LISTENING!
A person approached me and asked to be screened. As I was giving him the form and making him comfortable, I hear the (now-former) facilitator call out to this person, "Hi, (person's name)!!!" He immediately became uncomfortable and I'm thinking: "Oh, Sh*t!" The person I was screening stated that if he had known that SHE was going to be there, he would NOT have come! He also stated that he had TOLD her that he was planning on being in the grocery store during the screenings! She beat a hasty retreat and, somehow, he managed to calm down. As it turned out, he scored very high on the assessment which required that he be seen by a clinician on site. (We had only two clinicians, one of them being the NON-LISTENER.) Because the only other clinician was busy talking with another person who scored high, this gentleman had to wait. Ethically, because the NON-LISTENER knew him, she was not allowed to counsel him. My role was to screen, only, NOT counsel. The only thing I could do was keep him as comfortable as possible until the other clinician could see him. Again, I was annoyed that a situation, that could have and SHOULD HAVE been avoided was allowed to develop because this individual WOULD NOT LISTEN nor PAY ATTENTION to things that clearly demanded attention! She even created another situation when she snatched an assessment out of the hands of a person taking it, barking orders at me to score it, and the person was only HALF-DONE! I had to give it back so the person could finish filling it out! (I was so tempted to smack this ex-facilitator!)
At the end of the evening, she simply beat feet without saying anything else to anyone.
