Soldier Serving In Afghanistan Becomes First National Guard Allowed To Grow Beard For Norse Pagan...

MAJ Byron Oyler - I guess you have a very different approach to health care. I am a mental health worker(MHW1) for the state of Massachusetts, and I am assigned many times on Sunday to take clients to Interfaith or Roman Catholic mass. By original training in DMH and formal schooling, I am not a CNA or PCA but a kitchen worker that has been now on the units for close to 4 years.

In the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital, we have on-site a Chaplain for Interfaith and a Roman Catholic priest that comes in for Mass. I have explained to my clients that ask that I was born a Christian as my Dad was RC, and Mom was a Presbyterian. We do have some clients that are hyper-religious. We try to be a good example for the clients so they can see that living the way we do will keep them out of a locked unit. If praying with a client helps them we do it. I did it in Westboro when I was a Groundskeeper 1. You would much prefer that over getting assaulted because a client flipped out. The job of MHW is all-encompassing possibly even more than Charge Nurse as we do everything the nurses don't have time for.

The interesting thing here is that when a client talks about Norse gods they usually refer to ODIN. In the prison system, Odin is looked on as the warrior god and they refer to themselves as ODINites. It is usually like the big gangs like the ARYAN NATIONS and ARYAN BROTHERHOOD that talk about ODIN. In order to be a member, you have to "wet your steel" or stab someone. They also refer to "blood in blood out". They prefer you to kill someone for the Aryan Nation to be a member and you die to get out.

William Barry is it easy to go home at the end of the day and leave the images at work? How do you keep your work from looming over you at home?

PO3 Phyllis Maynard - It is not always easy to leave it there. I was one of 3 MHWs that cleaned the blood off the floor after Bill King, RN. was badly beaten by a patient that should not have been in the WRCH. He should have been in prison. This was at 2 AM. It says you are a Dentalman (Hygenist I am assuming) in the site. Well we have our own dental clinic area, as well as, an optometrist. About 80 percent or more have a criminal background or gang affiliation(Latin Kings, Aryan Nations etc.) as well as mental health issues and substance abuse issues. We have the most complex cases.They DO NOT go into the community until we are fairly certain they are safe to do so. A MHW will sit in the clinic with the Hygenist and the patient for safety.

Luckily, I work on a Transitional Care Unit which is part of the step down process to get them back to the community so we don't have that many issues. Our most recent incident was a patient slicing a female MHWs face with the Edge of a compact disc using it like a knife. I wasn't there for that, as I work 11 to 7A normally. This was months ago.

William Barry that you described the population have criminal/gang affiliation. I'll tell you something I stumbled across 7 years ago when I was still volunteering as a DAV Service Officer. A female Army recruiter was stationed in my town temporarily for the sole purpose of recruiting gang members. I talked with her in Walmart. She told me this. The line they used to get them to join was this, " you like AK47s, well you get to carry badass guns to the front line and kill every enemy standing. Why not do that and get paid a d get benefits". This is during the time that women were being violently raped, assaulted, and murdered. They did not know they were commanding orcsuoervisibg gang bangers. Military leadership miscalculated that move