Learn how to be a more effective mental health professional while keeping safe in a challenging environment.

1. BEATEN
Being Exceptionally Alert
To Environmental
Nastiness

2. Which one of these people
would you want to be?

3. Well, let’s hope you picked
Chuck Norris because:
• Chuck is constantly alert
and aware
• Chuck never gets
surprised by anything
• Chuck has a sixth sense
about impending danger
• Chuck is always in
control
• Chuck is sensitive to the
needs of others
• OK, so he’s sensitive to
the needs of others for a
front kick to the head, but
he’s still sensitive

4. What can Chuck teach me as
a mental health professional?
“I really wish I’d studied Chuck’s principles before I had my
head suddenly and involuntarily rotated what felt like over 180
degrees at something approaching light speed by the 240-
pound schizophrenic patient I was talking to and took my eye
off of for just a split second…although I guess I could have
maybe avoided it if I hadn’t somehow convinced myself that he
wasn’t really capable of hurting me, which now that I think of it
was really dumb…but hey, how was I supposed to remember
something so trivial as the note in his history I’d just read
about the time when he held a friend hostage at a backyard
picnic table for almost two hours by standing over him while
holding a hammer and thumping it into his hand and whacking
it on the picnic table six inches next to the guy over and over
again. I bet Chuck would have remembered that, don’t you?”
Jeff Rogers, Washington County Civil Commitment Investigator

5. Chuck’s Basics: INPATIENTS
• I -- Insist the patient stay at least 15 feet away from you
• N -- Never talk in person when you can just call
• P -- Patients are there for a reason…a really good reason
• A -- Always defend yourself first and empathize second
• T -- Trust is something that eventually will get you killed
• I -- If you start to relate to the patient, refer to the “A” rule
• E -- Expect the worst from everyone, staff included
• N -- Nobody will be there to help you when you need them
• T -- Take care of yourself, and I don’t mean wimpy self-care crap
• S -- Someday, somehow, one of them is going to get you

6. Chucks Six Simple Rules
of Effective Therapy
• Only complete losers need therapy
• Only complete losers believe others need therapy
• If people can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps,
they have no reason to exist in the first place
• If people have no bootstraps, they didn’t have the guts to
steal them from a sleeping homeless person
• Telling people to go to their “safe place” is like Leonardo
DiCaprio (action hero, my ass) telling Kate Winslet that
climbing onto the stern of the Titanic is better than
tumbling head over foot down the vertical deck while
people and heavy objects weighing tons thunder down on
them, thus bringing them the quick and beautiful death
that all real heroes dream of.
• The Total Gym can bring about total mental and physical
fitness in just three 30-minute sessions a week

7. How to tell when a colleague
hasn’t been listening to Chuck
• Obvious startle response evident when patients come
within, I don’t know, half a mile
• When in the milieu, maneuvers so as to always keep
another staff member between him and a certain patient
• Overheard telling patients that he/she is really the only
staff member on their side
• Responds violently to practical jokes like pasting “Kick
Me” signs on the back of his shirt
• Urinating uncontrollably when asked to conduct group
• Whimpering
• Bendable “Safe Pen” sticking out of forehead like some
sort of bizarre drinking straw

8. And if you’re wondering,
“Can I follow Chuck and still feel
compassion for my patients?”
just remember……