it doesn’t seem to follow the basic premises of other medical branches.
It seems all psychiatrists cite is to “meditate” or to “be calm”, so some such, something which most people don’t do.
Also, psychiatrists say that “being positive” is key and to not let anything bother you. OK, but many supposedly healthy people tend to get irate at even small things and aren’t ill, so go figure.
It also seems that they don’t seem to get modern society, label their patients and stereotype them, and have no issue helping them. they also seem to think that modern society is like Little House on the Prairie, they don’t seem to get how people think or reason.
Take this article:
It says that drinking is wrong (so do they live in modern society?) and that essentially being humble is key (again, do they live in modern society)?
It’s clear that society only exists to promote a given moral agenda.
Psychiatry is a relatively modern branch of medicine, and as such sometimes gets things wrong. But that is not to say that it is totally worthless: many people owe their lives to psychiatry, either through the counselling they have been given or the medications that have tempered their otherwise psychotic mental states.
My own experience with psychiatry is reflected above. There are others on this board who have different experiences and opinions. They’ll turn up soon!
I was once diagnosed with clinical depression and I was prescribed zoloft. Seemed to help me a lot. The counseling wasn’t that great. In fact it wasn’t really counseling; more of clinical analysis in the doc’s part (which I of course cannot interpret.) Things like why I was dressed well on a particular session and not in others, to why I like eating my usual comfort foods, etc.
Psychiatry gives people with serious mental dysfunctions access to useful drugs and that’s a good thing, it also can wildly over-prescribe drugs for behaviors which may not be properly diagnosed or difficult to define like ADD and ADHD. It’s not a scam by any means, but the tools at its disposal are more akin to blunt clubs than scalpels at this stage of how well we understand the human brain. They generally do the best they can with what they have.
It’s also not helpful that many people chase fashionable diagnoses for themselves or their kids until they find a doctor willing to cooperate. People chasing Asperger diagnoses is a prime example of that.
I did have one therapist who would tell me, upon feeling anxious about a situation, to write down all my fears and the negative things I was thinking, and then to simply switch them around in my head and repeat them.
Needless to say, she wasn’t the right psychiatrist for me. I think it really is a matter of communicating well with the right person. If I ever seek therapy again, I would like to be the one to lead the conversation. I will say “I’m hear just to have someone hear my story. I’m not looking for advice, at least not until and if I feel I have properly communicated myself and all relevant aspects of my experience to you. It is therapeutic for me just to be able to come in here and shamelessly tell another soul what I struggle with without feeling like I am being a burden, or being judged, or worrying that I will worry someone too much.”
If they won’t accept/allow that, they won’t get my money.
Both psychologists and psychiatrists have a tough row to hoe. Their patients are a motley crew, suffering from different conditions, personality flaws, cultural blindness (like reflexively distrusting an approach because it seems too Western or Eastern), habits, and living circumstances. Of course it is going to be hard to accurately diagnose and treat them, because their problems are influenced by all of these things. Also, because trust is so important when it comes to the self-disclosure of emotional and behavioral problems, patients must take the time to find a practitioner who they jibe with. This kind of search can be hard to do when there’s limited resources. But it’s essential for success to be had.
Personally, psychotherapy has been more helpful to me than psychopharmocology. But this is because I don’t like taking pills or dealing with side effects…so even if psychiatrists were the loveliest human beings on the planet, I still wouldn’t be a fan. I consult one occasionally just to be vigilant. I keep a psychologist in my back pocket to help me think through life’s difficulties. She has all matter of tricks under her sleeve, from borderline woo to hardcore C B T. I don’t expect her to be a hard scientist because my problems can’t be reduced to an equation or a theorem. And I have also know that I have to be an active participant. It took awhile for me to realize that even stupid homework assignments can have SOME value and that refusing to follow advice that doesn’t bowl me over with excitement means I will likely never follow anyone’s advice.
My experience with medicine in general hasn’t been TOO impressive. I don’t know a whole lot of people anyone who had a doctor cure them of anything, really. Lots of people have complications from surgery or end up being prescribed a gazillion drugs to treat a single problem. But we tend to accept these shortcomings for what they are, without indicting the entire medical profession. The same understanding should be granted to the treatment of mental illness.
I’m not sure how the OP is getting from that linked Mayo Clinic article that their stance is “drinking is wrong.” What it says is, “It may seem like alcohol or drugs lessen depression symptoms, but in the long run they generally worsen symptoms and make depression harder to treat.”
My personal experience corroborates this. After many, many years of taking antidepressants and self-medicating with alcohol, it was not until I stopped drinking entirely that I realized how much more effective the antidepressants are without the alcohol.
I don’t think they are frauds, but they are very limited in what they can actually do.
I withdrew from family and society when I realized how screwed up my family life was. My parents sent me to the school counselor. Most sessions were spent staring at ea other after I told him my life was a shithole and he nor I could change that and I wouldn’t pretend it wasn’t to appease anyone. He wanted me to curse, I didn’t see any point and refused. One thing I got from him was drawing out circumstances, with crayons - it gives me an insight to what it means to me.
The shitty childhood effected me in adulthood and I sought many ways to deal with it or over come it. Shelves of selfhelp books didn’t help much, so I tried psychiatry. Weeks of talking never came to any conclusion or revelations. Blaming my parents for doing what they thought was best seemed like a scapegoat tactic that didn’t fix anything. Anti-depressants became a daily reminder that I’m malformed - and I really didn’t need a reminder. And the side-effects outweighed any gains.
Then, after my divorce, I dated a psychiatrist (or psychologist) which was quite enlightening. They don’t have a clue how most conditions (like fetishes) form and there are very few cures. The majority of patients are just dealing with the equivalent of hangnails and colds. And the bulk of them will be told they have to allow themselves to find their own cure.
It’s interesting that the OP’s complaints about psychiatry are 180 degrees removed from the typical complaint about psychiatrists, which is that they immediately and reflexively prescribe a pharmaceutical remedy, not that they default to meditation or positive thinking. This causes me to wonder whether ca-nam has in fact been seeing a psychologist or some other form of therapist, and not a psychiatrist at all.
I can’t speak to psychiatry or psychology, because I have never dealt directly with someone in either of those fields. However, I have had therapy with licensed clinical social workers, and it has completely changed my life. As I’ve discussed in many other threads, the cognitive behavior therapy techniques that I have learned have helped me to deal with my anxiety and to recover from a longstanding, extremely debilitating eating disorder.
I think it’s interesting that you seem to think it was obvious that this wasn’t the right therapist for you. Reversal of negative thoughts is a well-documented CBT technique that does work for many people, including some who have discussed it on the SDMB.
I can’t deny that mental health professionals are working in a challenging field where there is still a lot to learn, and much of what they do is experimental and can’t be applied equally to each client. But I also know from personal experience that mental health counseling can be really valuable. I tend to recommend it to people who are in pain because it was so successful for me and because I think it is worth trying, even if it doesn’t have a perfect success record.
My view is that you do not know what a psychiatrist is and cannot tell the difference between a psychiatrist and other types of mental health professionals.
I think what is thought of as psychiatry is not so much a fraud, it is just a very immature branch of medicine. Neuroscience is not very advanced, and a lot of therapy seems to involved ‘intuitive’ understanding of how the brain works. Have bad thoughts, change your thoughts. Have bad feelings, think of good feelings, etc. Naturally the brain doesn’t seem to work that way.
I’ve been experimenting with a lot of esoteric therapies and therapists. For a few months my problems seem to really improve, but in the last few weeks they’ve started to come back. But I think we may be entering an age (due to advances in electronics and neuroscience) where therapy actually works for serious problems. Right now it really doesn’t.
Is that true though? Here is my understanding of pharmacology for mental illness.
For psychosis or bipolar disorder, pharmacology can be fairly effective at controlling some symptoms.
Pharmacology can help with some anxiety disorders or addictions (methadone, etc). Treatment for depression is a mixed bag, some studies show a benefit and some do not.
For the vast majority of other mental illnesses they really don’t do much. For borderline personality disorder, PTSD, autism, APD, anorexia, attachment disorder, etc. the medicines are mostly ineffective.
