Latest news with #psychiatricnurse
Yahoo
11-08-2025
- Yahoo
Psychiatric Nurse Allegedly Killed 'Charismatic' Landlord, Police Find Chilling Recording on Phone: 'Help Me'
John 'Skip' Dove Jr. was found dead by police responding to a 911 call made by his tenant, who is now under arrestNEED TO KNOW John 'Skip' Dove Jr. was found with multiple stab wounds in his Soldotna, Alaska home LaShaunda Lewis has been arrested in connection with the killing Police found a video on Dove's phone where they believe Lewis can be heard whispering for help, per an affidavitA traveling psychiatric nurse in Alaska has allegedly admitted to killing her landlord who was found dead in his home last week. John 'Skip' Dove Jr., 78, was found with multiple stab wounds in his Soldotna, Alaska home on Tuesday, Aug. 5, by officers responding to a 911 call, KTUU, the Anchorage Daily News and local radio station KDLL reported, citing authorities. Police arrested 31-year-old LaShaunda Lewis in connection with Dove's killing. She was a tenant for three months at Dove's residence, per the Anchorage Daily News. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by all three outlets, police were at the residence on Aug. 4, while conducting a welfare check requested by Lewis' family. The family member requested the check after the two spoke on the phone and Lewis, the family member said, was behaving strangely during the call, the Anchorage Daily News and KDLL reported, citing the affidavit. When police arrived, Lewis reportedly told them she needed to check herself in for a psychiatric evaluation, but declined to get one, per the affidavit, KTUU and the Anchorage Daily News reported. The following day, troopers responded to a 911 call at the residence and found Lewis naked and bleeding. She was transported to a medical facility owing to self-inflicted injuries, per authorities, before police found Dove's body on the ground. He had been stabbed several times. When speaking to police, Lewis allegedly admitted to the killing and claimed she could not remember several details. She allegedly said there was a "struggle" before Dove's killing, according to investigators, KTUU and the Anchorage Daily News reported. In a video found on Dove's phone, Lewis was heard whispering "help me" and "he tried to kill me," KTUU reported, citing investigators' account. Dove, a Vietnam war veteran, is being remembered by friends and family as "charismatic" and friendly. He lost his wife in 2023, the family said. 'He has this human magnetism about him. He just can attract a crowd, they like being around him," his brother Peter Dove told KTUU. 'It's very difficult to explain. It's a gift of God.' 'He didn't know a stranger,' his friend Chuck Winters said. 'He had all the classic characteristics you need to be like an effective human, but on multiple levels, because he could relate to anyone. He could talk to anyone. Never met a stranger.'Lewis has been charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder, according to online court records reviewed by PEOPLE. Records did not indicate plea and attorney information. Read the original article on People
The Guardian
06-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
After suffering a breakdown at work, a nurse has had to confront her lifetime of damaging self-sacrifice
Bec* first came in for therapy for burnout. She was a psychiatric nurse and worked at a public hospital in an inpatient unit. She sobbed during our first session, full of guilt at having had to take leave after collapsing in tears during a shift. She said she was letting her patients and team down by being away. The strength of Bec's anguish at letting people down felt disproportionate to the circumstances, and I noticed that she wasn't concerned about her tears and collapse, just about the impact of her time off on others. I probed deeper, trying to understand this. Bec said she'd been working very long hours, usually pulling double shifts a few times a week. She was proud of her work ethic and said that always being available to her team and patients was important to her. She seemed to derive most of her identity from her professional role. While she had a partner, she was often too tired to see her girlfriend, or to socialise with friends or exercise. She was often stressed because of her long hours but felt too guilty to make any changes and kept pushing through her tiredness and stress, until the day she broke down crying. It felt important to understand Bec's relationship with work in the context of her underlying personality traits and the beliefs she had formed about herself. Often, when people are over-invested in work, they have a psychological makeup characterised by themes of self-sacrifice, abandonment of their own needs, perfectionism, enmeshment with others and the need to 'earn' their place in the world. We spoke about Bec's early life during our first few sessions. She was raised by a single mother who had a serious mental illness and difficulties with addiction, and was repeatedly admitted to hospital. Bec was her mother's carer from the age of 13, managing appointments and medication, soothing her mother and remaining attuned to her moods, remaining alert to the possibility of overdose, and helping with daily tasks. She developed great empathy for those who were unwell and said that she had a strong desire to help others, leading to her decision to train as a psychiatric nurse. She'd been praised from a young age for being so 'mature, kind and giving', and she had learned that her value lay in these qualities. Bec had almost no emotion in her voice and body language when she told me about her childhood. She seemed nonchalant about her mother's difficulties and dismissive when I reflected that becoming a carer at a young age would have come with struggles, such as missing out on important adolescent experiences or being able to live free of worry. 'It is what it is,' she said, and this was a line she would repeat multiple times throughout our therapy, each time I touched on anything sensitive. Bec's difficulties struck me as difficulties that had been decades in the making. While she was 45 when she saw me, her patterns of overwork had commenced as soon as she started working as a nurse. She over-identified with this role and told me she couldn't sleep at night when clients were not doing well. Bec's pattern was typical of the archetype of the wounded healer. Many people drawn to helping professions such as nursing, psychology or paramedicine have experienced difficulties in life that have predisposed them to wanting to help others as a way of finding their own healing. They often re-enact early patterns, such as self-sacrifice. The wounded healer has been hurt but has not engaged in any healing work. They may try to resolve their own hurts by helping others. While people with this pattern can make excellent clinicians and healers with great empathy and sensitivity, this is usually facilitated by self-discovery, insight and good boundaries, and engagement in recovery work. When the wounded healer pattern is unrecognised, the outcomes can be disastrous with malignant behaviours, such as positioning oneself as a saviour, working to the point of collapse, or breaching boundaries with patients. As therapy progressed, Bec and I started to explore the messages of self-sacrifice she had unknowingly absorbed. The day she spoke about her sadness at having missed her school formal because she was caring for her mother was a turning point. We could then start to speak about the role of children in a family and the impacts of being parentified. We worked on emotional recognition and healthy lifestyle management, as well as boundaries. We needed to do a lot of work with the part of Bec that felt guilty for holding boundaries, as well as the guilt she felt when talking about her resentment toward her mother. We encouraged regular rest and worked on helping Bec understand and meet her own emotional and physical needs. Her progress in therapy was slow as the ground we covered was vast, but this work allowed Bec to have a more realistic appraisal of the importance of work, and to nurture an identity outside the self-sacrificial healer role. * Bec is a fictitious amalgam to exemplify many similar cases that I see Dr Ahona Guha is a clinical and forensic psychologist, trauma expert and author from Melbourne. She is the author of Reclaim: Understanding Complex Trauma and Those Who Abuse, and Life Skills for a Broken World In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat
WebMD
16-05-2025
- Health
- WebMD
No One Was Coming to Save Me
For years, I thought my emotional highs and lows were just part of life, maybe even part of being human. But over time, I began to realize something wasn't quite right. As a psychiatric nurse practitioner and therapist, I sought therapy to stay balanced. Not just for myself, but for my clients. Yet during my own sessions, I noticed a pattern: I felt like a completely different person depending on the day. Some sessions, I cried uncontrollably and felt emotionally hollow. Other days, I was hopeful, energetic, even impulsive. I'd overspend, take on too much, and react strongly in my relationships. These drastic shifts seemed normal to me because I'd grown up in an environment shaped by mental illness. My mother lived with severe bipolar disorder with psychosis. Because I didn't experience the latter, I assumed I was fine. But deep down, I knew something was off. The Signs I Missed Looking back, the symptoms of bipolar disorder were apparent. As a teenager, I stayed up for days, cleaning obsessively and scrubbing the grit between every tile. I had episodes of dissociation and sudden risky behavior. I snuck out at night and stole my parents' cars. There were legal troubles and hypersexuality. I became a teen mom. But even then, I didn't see these as symptoms. To me, they were survival responses to trauma. I minimized them because that's what I'd learned to do. I often felt trapped, like my own mind was a prison. I remember lying on my closet floor, crying and wondering why no one cared. Not even my own parents. One day, I sat alone in a dark room, overwhelmed by a wave of depression so heavy I could physically feel it. I asked myself a question I hadn't before: Does anyone even know I'm struggling? The truth was that I hadn't told anyone. I hadn't asked for help. That moment changed everything. I realized that I'd been waiting for someone to notice, to save me. But I also realized that no one was coming to save me. I wrote those words down, over and over again. And then I made a decision. If no one else could save me, I'd save myself. Despite helping others professionally, I judged myself harshly. I didn't believe someone like me could live with bipolar disorder. I was high-functioning. I was successful. But that's the myth: that mental illness has a certain look or level of functioning. It doesn't. So I did what I'd told so many of my clients to do: I reached out to a provider. I got help. And that step changed everything. What Getting Help Gave Me Getting a diagnosis and starting treatment not only saved my mental health, it also saved my relationships, my marriage, and my connection with my children. Most importantly, it gave me back my relationship with myself. It taught me that healing isn't about pretending you're OK. It's about being honest enough to ask for support. It's about letting go of shame and embracing the reality that even caregivers, clinicians, and 'high-functioning' people need care, too. Final Thoughts Living with bipolar disorder isn't easy. But it's not a life sentence. It's a manageable condition with the right support. My story is just one example of how reaching out for help can be a turning point. Not a sign of weakness, but one of the bravest choices you can make.
