Anyone ever flip out in your class?

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sa94401

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I attend a medium size school, so pretty much everything gets around.
A classmate flipped out and displayed, scary, unprofessional, all around lame behavior regarding things that have nothing to do with med school (his personal life)

NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING. No one wants to get involved, this classmate has no friends, well 1 or 2 and everyone else cares about their grades also they don't want to tell on him, which I totally understand, I don't either.

My question, or one of them, I know this person is unstable and will never want to work him. What's my responsibility. If you any experience with this please pm me. I'm worried about talking/posting publicly

Thanks
 
sa94401 said:
I attend a medium size school, so pretty much everything gets around.
A classmate flipped out and displayed, scary, unprofessional, all around lame behavior regarding things that have nothing to do with med school (his personal life)
Click to expand...

People have different tolerances for behavior, I think we'd need to hear a little detail before telling you how to act... maybe everybody else doesn't think it's a huge deal.
 
Agreed, before anyone could advise you of anything, we would need to have more info on the situation.
 
How exactly do you define "flipping out"? If you mean ranting or expressing frustration, I would be hard pressed to find someone in my class who hasn't done that at some point. If you mean harassment, throwing things, or something of that sort, that is a completely different story.

Obviously, we don't know exactly what your situation is, but if whatever this classmate has done is making other students feel unsafe or threatened, you should consider saying something to someone at your school. Just a warning though, if you complain about anything less than that (with the exception of very unprofessional behavior), you run the risk of your administration brushing you off and looking like a tool to the rest of your classmates. Use your own judgment: is there a serious problem here? If there is, then do something to fix it. If not, then talk to the student if you feel like it would help, but don't take things any farther than that.
 
sa94401 said:
I attend a medium size school, so pretty much everything gets around.
A classmate flipped out and displayed, scary, unprofessional, all around lame behavior regarding things that have nothing to do with med school (his personal life)

NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING. No one wants to get involved, this classmate has no friends, well 1 or 2 and everyone else cares about their grades also they don't want to tell on him, which I totally understand, I don't either.

My question, or one of them, I know this person is unstable and will never want to work him. What's my responsibility. If you any experience with this please pm me. I'm worried about talking/posting publicly

Thanks
Click to expand...

"flipping out" is a very relative term...
 
You know what, I'll advise without hearing anything more about the situation:

If he assulted somebody, tell someone

If he made a credible threat to do bodily harm to someone else, tell someone.

If he made a credible threat to harm himself, tell someone

If he did anything short of that, mind your own buisness.

If you end up having to work with him I would recomend you get through it rather than trying to get out of it. Nobody likes a rat and everyone's worked with people they don't like.
 
sa94401 said:
I attend a medium size school, so pretty much everything gets around.
A classmate flipped out and displayed, scary, unprofessional, all around lame behavior regarding things that have nothing to do with med school (his personal life)

NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING. No one wants to get involved, this classmate has no friends, well 1 or 2 and everyone else cares about their grades also they don't want to tell on him, which I totally understand, I don't either.

My question, or one of them, I know this person is unstable and will never want to work him. What's my responsibility. If you any experience with this please pm me. I'm worried about talking/posting publicly

Thanks
Click to expand...

Any concerns that you have about anything that potentially affects your learning needs to be brought to the attention of the Dean of Students. If you are concerned about your classmate, you are actually not equipped to help them very much and thus, your Dean needs to be notified.

Medical school is stressful under the best of circumstances and different people have different stress reactions. You don't want to have your classmate's situation escalate to something that DOES involve more than himself/herself.

Don't discuss anything more about your classmate on this type of public discussion board. Your Dean of Students is your first contact and you need to document what happened, when it happened and who (if any others) was involved. After that, there isn't much you can do other than not add to the person's stress. You can drop a note anonymously and explain the situation if you don't want to be involved.

I tell you this because one of my classmates committed suicide. If anyone had known that this classmate was suffering (had to do with a significant other), we would have let the Dean know rather than for our classmate to be found dead during exam week. It was a horrible situation for our entire school. Any one of us would have helped if this person had reached out. Sometimes folks vent and that's the only way that they reach out.
 
Since you gave us zero to work with I'll just say to do nothing. The student obviously is lashing out for some help and you are all useless. Did you actually witness anything? If not, you have no business in the situation. If you did, then talk to the person and if anyone was threatened you have an ethical responsibility to report it. The threat could include the individual being at risk for self-harm.
 
Does passing gas and belching count as unprofessional and scary behavior?
 
Perrotfish said:
You know what, I'll advise without hearing anything more about the situation:

If he assulted somebody, tell someone

If he made a credible threat to do bodily harm to someone else, tell someone.

If he made a credible threat to harm himself, tell someone

If he did anything short of that, mind your own buisness.

If you end up having to work with him I would recomend you get through it rather than trying to get out of it. Nobody likes a rat and everyone's worked with people they don't like.
Click to expand...

👍

"all around lame behavior" :laugh:
 
sa94401 said:
I attend a medium size school, so pretty much everything gets around.
A classmate flipped out and displayed, scary, unprofessional, all around lame behavior regarding things that have nothing to do with med school (his personal life)

NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING. No one wants to get involved, this classmate has no friends, well 1 or 2 and everyone else cares about their grades also they don't want to tell on him, which I totally understand, I don't either.

My question, or one of them, I know this person is unstable and will never want to work him. What's my responsibility. If you any experience with this please pm me. I'm worried about talking/posting publicly

Thanks
Click to expand...

I think that someone should probably check up on him. Honestly, there are a lot of people in med school that I wouldn't want to work with, but the fact of the matter is that they're my colleagues and I feel like I have somewhat of an obligation to look out for them. I don't mean that YOU should go bring him chicken soup or something. But if you're really concerned, like njbmd said, bring it up to the Dean of students-- "hey, I'm really concerned about so and so... I noticed the other day that he seemed really stressed out."

People all have a different tolerance of how much they can cope with and different mechanisms of coping with them. For some students, med school is the least of their problems. Some people internalize their problems and others externalize theirs. He may just need a hand right now or some friends.

I mean no one wants to get involved-- but what if something really did happen? What about those two med school suicides that already happened this year? What about those college campus shootings? Is it so crazy to think that that could happen at a med school? Everyone says "mind your own business," but then when something horrible happens everyone says, "why didn't someone do something?"
 
sa94401 said:
I attend a medium size school, so pretty much everything gets around.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that you have no firsthand knowledge of the incident?

If so, I'm gonna go with the "mind your own business" school of thought. It's bad enough that you'd use the words "unprofessional" and "lame" in the same sentence, but your whole post smells a bit melodramatic to me.

I'm also not sure what grades have to do with the situation, nor why flipping out over personal subjects is somehow less acceptable than flipping out over medically-related topics.
 
I thought this thread was about someone getting up and screaming in the middle of lecture and then jumping out the window like the Indian in ****oo's Nest. That would be legendary.
 
Flipping out is somewhat the norm once you're a big time doctor, right? 😉

He's just ahead of the curve.
 
Without getting into any details, yes I have heard of students talking to a higher-up about a fellow student, and that student was able to get some help.

Whether you should get involved depends on what you are talking about. If you are talking about the kid getting too drunk after an exam or something, then mind your own business. If you are talking about signs of depression, risky behavior, or serious substance abuse, then you should let somebody know. Medical schools have resources available to help. When in doubt, just let the dean know and he will sort it out.
 
sa94401 said:
I attend a medium size school, so pretty much everything gets around.
A classmate flipped out and displayed, scary, unprofessional, all around lame behavior regarding things that have nothing to do with med school (his personal life)

NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING. No one wants to get involved, this classmate has no friends, well 1 or 2 and everyone else cares about their grades also they don't want to tell on him, which I totally understand, I don't either.

My question, or one of them, I know this person is unstable and will never want to work him. What's my responsibility. If you any experience with this please pm me. I'm worried about talking/posting publicly

Thanks
Click to expand...

It would be helpful if you defined "flipped out". This is about the right age for a first break, so yes, it happens. OTOH, I can't say I've ever heard a psychotic break described as "lame behavior". So I'll just second those who suggested talking to someone at your school if your classmate seems to pose a danger to himself or others. Otherwise, it's probably best to just mind your own business.
 
phospho said:
nope... it's not a real person... it's a face from a german social psychology study that took a bunch of pretty faces and got their "average" using some cool software.
Click to expand...

Oh, so you're german. 😍
 
Guys, we should let this post die... OP hasn't shown any interest in responding, and its all a crapshoot without more information...👎thumbdown👎
 
Perrotfish said:
You know what, I'll advise without hearing anything more about the situation:

If he assulted somebody, tell someone

If he made a credible threat to do bodily harm to someone else, tell someone.

If he made a credible threat to harm himself, tell someone

If he did anything short of that, mind your own buisness.

If you end up having to work with him I would recomend you get through it rather than trying to get out of it. Nobody likes a rat and everyone's worked with people they don't like.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice. I needed to hear it straight up. It was a threat to harm himself and it seemed like someone else. The credible part is where I am wavering. Don't want to mess up someone's reputation if they were just trying to get some attention (which I personally think is weird, but wouldn't tell any teachers about). The threat to harm herself/himself was told to several people, like anyone with Internet access.
 
SpookyDoc said:
Guys, we should let this post die... OP hasn't shown any interest in responding, and its all a crapshoot without more information...👎thumbdown👎
Click to expand...
Sorry, got busy and forgot to check the thread. Then I had problems finding it. I don't post a lot. Thanks for taking the time to answer everyone. It's really hard to know what to do.
 
If it's in the public domain as per your latest post, anyone can see it and thus you should feel free to report it.

Possibility 1 of n: He's desperate for help and thus getting the admin involved might be what he needs to get it.

Possibility 2 of n: He's pissed about something, has threatened to hurt others, and thus should be reported because it can escalate quickly.

My vote is for reporting it, if he's threatened to harm himself or others.
 
Unless it's clearly a joke, it's probably better to report it. You can always preface it with the fact that you don't know the person well enough to know if it's serious or not. If it turns out to be nothing, you're off the hook.

But if you don't report it, and the person DOES harm themselves in some way, I guarantee you it'll be very hard to live with yourself for a while afterward.

We had some oddballs in my class, including a girl with BPD. If that's what's happening here (which is possible, from the sound of it) the Dean's office should definitely know, if they don't already.
 
Last edited:
What two med school suicides? I didn't hear about this.

Thanks for the advice, you really made a lot of sense.
 
There was a topic pertaining to the suicides somewhere in the forum, you can do a quick search and find it.

I don't remember the first one, but the second one happened fairly recently, at Baylor if I am not mistaken.
 
Any threat to harm oneself needs to be taken seriously. Report it. Just give the URL to the dean, tell him you aren't sure if he was serious, walk away.
 
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