How does Miao Nian’s psychiatric placement remind us to look beyond outward behavior?

While studying nursing and midwifery, Miao Nian completed placements in different departments, including an acute psychiatric ward. She remembered a mother who would not speak or eat, making it difficult even to understand her chief complaint; an older woman who was sometimes brightly dressed and very active, then became low and withdrew to her room; and a teenage girl who stood in the middle of the activity area in one position without responding to others.

These were observations from her younger years. Miao Nian also said that if someone was not her assigned patient, she might not know the specific reasons. Seeing the girl remain still did not justify inventing a family history for her. Clothing, silence or a single action is not a basis for making your own diagnosis.

Our discussion of these experiences was about understanding a person’s difficulties more deeply. Religious talk of inner demons or energy must not reduce all mental illness to ghosts based on surface appearances. Nor do those old memories of care provide the answer for every person today.