I may regret this... Ask the doctor working in a psychiatric hospital.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Hello!

I am an escaped mental patient. I have been kept on a locked ward, retained there against my will and subjected to forced psychiatric treatment.

I have been given the following psychiatric diagnoses, from most lurid on down:

paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur
paranoid schizophrenic
manic-depressive (now called bipolar disorder)
schizo-dependent schizophrenic
schizotypal personality disorder
borderline personality disorder

If asked to provide my own opinion, based on the descrips and writeups, I’d say I have historically best fit schizotypal personality disorder. I could not describe myself in 5th or 8th grade better than the Wikipedia article, in fact.

Not really who I am today, although having been that certainly shapes me still, etc.

The other dx were applied less accurately (in fact when I was held as manic dep was when I was closest to the descrip for paranoid schiz; and kind of vice versa, although neither was as dead-on as schizotypal personality disorder)

So, my question (finally): do you think the people in the psychiatric profession in general sincerely believe that there exist these discrete “diseases”, as opposed to them being sort of useful categories for describing exhibited behavior, in other words more like adjectives? e.g, “He was kind of ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ when I saw him” ?

And you, yourself?

42

You want to slap some of your patients hard?

In twenty years I never had a desire to hit any of my students. Not once! Do you have a confidant – someone in medicine – that you can talk with about this? It should be someone who has been through the same program and would understand the stress of having to talk and listen to these people without hitting them.

The times that I have been on a mental health unit myself as a patient, there were always things to talk about. They are human beings. Get them to talk about what school was like when they were young – the games they played – recipes – what Christmases were like – family histories – non-threatening topics. If something does threaten, you can find something else unless they want to talk about what threatens them.

Seriously, I just can’t believe what you said. You sound like you are just putting in your time.

43

AHunter3, after reading the wiki on schizotypal personality disorder we should get together and party sometime. Of course, just based on that description, you probably wouldn’t want to come to Indiana, and with the way I drive I doubt if I could make it to NY :stuck_out_tongue: . (Note, link goes to Wikipedia entry on Borderline Personality Disorder.)

Although after reading your post and thinking about your question I’m reminded of the old joke “That’s why they call it a ‘practice’”. No disrespect intended to the med professionals on this board or elsewhere but I can certainly see where having a full working knowledge of everything that could possibly be wrong with a person, or just affecting them in a negative or unwanted fashion, would be damn near impossible.

Especially with the brain functions.

Sure, there is a lot of information about different ideas and diagnosis out there, but there are so many overlapping areas (as you yourself have probably seen) and quite a bit that is still misunderstood that it would be difficult at best to hit 100% all the time. Even at 99.999% there is still a risk that 1 in 100,000 that goes off, climbs a bell tower and starts picking off people. And that’s assuming that the entire 100,000 person sample even crosses paths with treatment in the first place.

That’s just involving one field of medical practice. Toss in all fields of general and specialized medicine, multiply by population and adjust for age related conditions and one ends up with a profession that, IMHO, exceeds the statistical success rate by a long shot.

I guess what I’m trying to say in relation to your question (which I am completely unqualified to answer and it wasn’t even asked of me in the first place) I think that many of the conditions you mentioned (and many more, including mine) are like flavors, there can be 31 or more of them but at the end of the day they are all still ice cream.

Except when they’re sherbert.

[QUOTE=Zoe]
You want to slap some of your patients hard?

In twenty years I never had a desire to hit any of my students. Not once! Do you have a confidant – someone in medicine – that you can talk with about this? It should be someone who has been through the same program and would understand the stress of having to talk and listen to these people without hitting them.

The times that I have been on a mental health unit myself as a patient, there were always things to talk about. They are human beings. Get them to talk about what school was like when they were young – the games they played – recipes – what Christmases were like – family histories – non-threatening topics. If something does threaten, you can find something else unless they want to talk about what threatens them.

Seriously, I just can’t believe what you said. You sound like you are just putting in your time.
[/QUOTE]
I think she is.

It looks as if psych is a stepping stone on the path to being a GP.

Interesting question though, as one climbs higher in one’s chosen profession where does one go for mentoring or counceling about stress and day to day issues in general?

44

[QUOTE=Zoe]
Seriously, I just can’t believe what you said. You sound like you are just putting in your time.
[/QUOTE]

Zoe, I don’t think it’s advisable to take this statement too literally. I interpreted it more as a figure of speech than an actual desire, and in any case irishgirl has made it abundantly clear that she has never actually raised a hand in anger, even contemplated actually doing so, nor does she ever plan to. We have no reason to believe that she has demonstrated anything other than utmost professionalism towards her patients.

That said, to expect that one never feel annoyance in the work place is simply an impossible standard. No matter how much you love your job, there will always be situations and or people that cause you frustration, and that alone does not warrant a serious reconsideration of one’s career.

45

Sorry Zoe- my tongue was firmly in my cheek. That was in no way serious!
Will post later.

46

[QUOTE=Zoe]
You want to slap some of your patients hard?

In twenty years I never had a desire to hit any of my students. Not once!
[/QUOTE]

Oh, for the love of…