[luluinthefog]

One psychiatrist tells you one thing, another tells you the opposite, meanwhile you're the one who has to suffer for their mistakes when they prescribe a wacky medication or take you off of something too fast or just keep prescribing benzos until you become dependent and your anxiety gets worse. Every medication they give you is just a shot in the dark, and they all have their own personal preference. Personal preference belongs in art, not sciences, especially when it comes to your health. 50 years or so from now when they look back at our psychiatry they'll probably consider it barbaric. I'll admit that brain medication does help some, but it hurts some too, even ruins lives, and it has never helped me. Many of us have tried psych med after psych med and have nothing to show for it but worsening mental health and unbearable side effects (that psychiatrists dont understand and cant explain). I wish I had been born in a time where psychiatry was much more advanced. Just a little rant, I hope I'm wrong and you all have good experiences with meds of course.

 

[REB]

Truer words have never been spoken here at DPselfhelp.

The amount of lives lost to and ravaged by western medicine's murderous ineptitude is inconceiveable.

 

[PerfectFifth]

The amount of lives lost to and ravaged by western medicine's murderous ineptitude is inconceiveable.

Anything for profits. Those pharma companies have a lot to gain by contaminating science with biased junk and indoctrinating psychiatrists into prescribing their garbage.

 

[Psyborg]

I completely agree

I hope my brain will heal from all the med abuse .in a recent thread I encouraged members telling them the meds havent done permanent damage and that is what I believe on one hand but am scared too on the other . according to people on another forum dedicated to the issue they say that the brain definitely heals over time and a mod told me this personally too . so I am hoping for the best

my doc is good but even him I cant trust fully . I look at psychiatry with different eyes now after years of experience with it

 

[PerfectFifth]

They're more impressive at treating some conditions than others. Mental health is one of the things they're less impressive at treating, especially since plain old misery and personality dysfunction get lumped in with genetic disorders like Schizophrenia and Bipolar.

Yes, that's one of my issues with it. Everything psychological tends to be medicalized nowadays. You can't be sad without being Depressed™ and apparently being in need of having your neurotransmitters readjusted with highly dubious drugs whose exact mechanism is a mystery, not to mention possible damaging long-term effects. Instead of pushing pills on people, I think these issues would better be treated as natural human problems, not so much as brain diseases. They were externally-caused, at least in a vast majority of cases, and they can be treated the same way.

The whole psychopharmacological treatment methodology is just so crude. Instead of identifying the cause of the illness through objective, empirical means and prescribing a specific drug with a verified mechanism that targets that cause-you know, like in any other branch of medicine-they engage in blind, unscientific trial & error. Yes, the neuroscience is primitive, but that's no excuse to blindly push drugs that may cause brain damage or unforeseen changes in brain function.

 

[forestx5]

It's how they treat "behavioral disorders". That's what the publicly funded mental health centers call mental illness. Then they ask for funding to combat stigmatization.

Give us the funding or we take away their medications. You won't want that. LOL

50 years into the future, and they will not be looking back at todays psychiatric treatment, and thinking it was barbaric.

In order for that to happen, there would have to be a revolution in the understanding of the brain, its illness, and its treatment.

That is very unlikely to happen.

I first became ill in 1971. That is almost 49 years ago. The decade of the brain (1990-2000) came and went.

Nothing came of it.

Very little has changed in those 49 years, I sadly report. Fasten your seat belts. It could be a very long trip.

 

[Chip1021]

I think this is the perfect thread to pose this question: what is the subject matter of psychiatry? For example, cardiology is the study of the heart and the diseases that can affect it's proper functioning. Neurology is the study of the brain and central nervous system and its associated diseases. What does psychiatry study? You ask even mental health professionals and even academics in the field and you get a surprising variation in responses. Some say it's the study of human behavior, which is fine in and of itself, but how does that relate to the idea of the body as a machine? They use analogies like "dysfunctional behavior" which is sort of a misnomer, since all behavior has a function (what they really mean is "disapproved" or "maladaptive"). Some say that it's the study of the mind. But is mind even a scientific concept, or is it a philosophical idea? Others say that it's the study of the brain. Okay, but how does that differentiate psychiatry from neurology? They might then reply that neurology studies brain diseases that cause physical problems, like mobility issues, numbness and tingling and aches and pains, whereas psychiatry studies brain diseases that cause behavioral issues, like schizophrenia or bipolar. But don't all brain diseases affect behavior? And does it seem likely that a person could have a brain disease that affects only behavior, and does not produce any physical discomforts? And what's more, I think it's naive to think that when a person is experiencing emotional and behavioral issues, and we assume that is due to a problem within the body, that the problem MUST be with the brain. We know if several other issues (e.g. hypothyroidism) that can affect mood.

I guess I'm making a couple of points here. First, I would think that it would be a prerequisite to being considered a science that your field be able to define your subject matter in a specific way that includes everything that you study and excludes those things that are outside its scope (which doesn't mean it has no relationship to other fields, of course, as all things are linked and related to one another).

But most importantly consider this: every time in history, on an individual and collective level, whenever we've discovered the biological source of a person's "mental illness", that person's problem immediately exits the field of psychiatry and enters another field of medicine. If it's discovered that they have a brain tumor or Ms, they are sent to neurology. If they have syphilis, they are sent to infectious disease specialists, etc. What do you think would happen, hypothetically, if it were discovered that schizophrenia were a legit brain disease, or that bipolar were an endocrine problem? Would psychiatrists still be responsible for treating them?

By the way, if you were to ask me what the subject matter of psychiatry is based on how it is actually practiced presently and historically I would answer with one word: conflict. Psychiatry is the study and "treatment" of inter- and intra-personal conflict.

 

[James_80]

I agree with a lot of posts here. Psychiatrists are sanctioned drug dealers on a salary. They make educated guesses because the science is lagging behind the effects of psychiatric treatment. No one can say for sure how drugs like ssris or treatments like ECT really affect the brain. They can make a guess e.g. drugs that increase serotonin sometimes help depression, therefore depression is caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain. This is like saying hangovers are improved by consuming coffee and eating bacon so therefore hangovers are caused by a lack of coffee and bacon in the system. I've taken drugs that helped but mostly the drugs I have taken have made me a lot worse. The drugs that helped had a withdrawal period that lasted for as long as I was on the drug itself, which I was never made aware of before starting.

I don't think psychiatrists are malevolent. They are mostly good people wanting to earn a living - that's all. They have a medical training but the understanding of the brain is so primitive that it renders the training almost useless. What upsets me the most is how psychiatrists act with so much authority when they could be more honest about what they really know, which is.... not much. If this lack of understanding was more clearly stated then perhaps more effort would be put into alternative forms of support for people suffering with poor mental health and more research on alternative treatments. I think the best people to dispense medication and other treatments are people who have had direct experience of the drugs/treatment themselves. At least that way they have the experience to rely on, which is more valuable in my opinion.

I'm hoping in the future there will be more of a holistic focus on treatment rather than "one pill fixes all" and I'm excited to see how the trials on psychedelics are progressing. You never know, there might be a revolution in psychiatry around the corner. Hopefully it will be very different and unrecognisable compared to the way it is at the moment.

 

[PerfectFifth]

No one can say for sure how drugs like ssris or treatments like ECT really affect the brain. They can make a guess e.g. drugs that increase serotonin sometimes help depression, therefore depression is caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain. This is like saying hangovers are improved by consuming coffee and eating bacon so therefore hangovers are caused by a lack of coffee and bacon in the system.

Yep! That's a great analogy.

 

[James_80]

Yep! That's a great analogy.

They might be better off prescribing daily coffee and bacon for depression. Baconzac and Coffexor.

 

[Chip1021]

I think you hit the nail on the head there, James. I agree with everything you said, especially the part about psychiatrists having authority when they would be much more respectable if they were honest about what they do and what they know. I think beyond the conceptual problems with the field, the other major problem is political: the power differential between doctor and patient in psychiatry I think results in these boastful and arrogant claims (psychiatry still is in great part a custodial enterprise). The doctor, by dint of being a doctor is the “rational” one, and the patient, by dint of being a mental case, is the “irrational” one.

 

[hanginginhere_ramen]

The worst part too is that a lot of psychiatrists look down on therapists because they think we need more "help" than they can give, even though even something like cbt or dbt can help people change the way they think and bring their illnesses down to a manageable level.

 

[REB]

Anything for profits. Those pharma companies have a lot to gain by contaminating science with biased junk and indoctrinating psychiatrists into prescribing their garbage.

Although the pharmaceutical industry probably's been the primary driving force behind the medical holocaust over the last century, i would like to point out that very little of it would

be possible without the compliance and mind numbing stupidity of physicians. In many cases they're actually the sole perpetrator.

Take the benzo epidemic as an example. The manufacturers of these drugs all state in their guidelines that duration of treatment is N O T to exceed 14 days, yet

tens of thousands of people are kept on these drugs for decades leaving them absolutely neurologically fu*ked to shit.

A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that physcians are acting in good faith and in line with the current level of knowledge, hereby absolving them from all responsibilities.

I couldn't possibly disagree more. They choose not to exercise caution, they choose not to question the current level of "knowledge", they choose to prescribe pills (by the millions)

that they do not understand the mechanisms, interactions or long term implications of.

They should absolutely be held responsible. They should be held responsible for crimes against humanity.

It's just absolutely comical how this pattern of genocidal ineptitude keeps repeating itself over and over again in medicine, and we never seem to learn from it.

Not only do we seem unable to learn from it, but it looks to me as if every generation is actively trying to outdo the old one in body count and carnage.

Here's the bottom line though.. We have a very limted understanding of the human body (we don't even know what to feed it, for christ's sake),

so how about we calm down on the chemical warfare until we do? Radical stuff, i know.

 

[James_80]

Take the benzo epidemic as an example. The manufacturers of these drugs all state in their guidelines that duration of treatment is N O T to exceed 14 days, yet

tens of thousands of people are kept on these drugs for decades leaving them absolutely neurologically fu*ked to shit.

Someone recently posted on dpselfhelp that they had been prescribed Klonopin for 18 years:

https://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/94914-any-long-term-5-years-klonopin-users-out-there/

Guidelines say: take them for up to 14 days. Doctor says: take them indefinitely if you like. That is absolutely clueless and neglectful treatment.

 

[REB]

Sounds like reckless endangerment to me. Maybe even attempted murder.

Why aren't these reptiles held responsible for their blatant professional negligence anywhere in the world?

 

[forestx5]

psychiatry is the triage ward of neurology. Triage is a medical term and is a process which determines who receives care first....and who receives care last, and in a military setting, who is left to die because

the doctors figure you wouldn't want to live without balls, eyes, and 3 of your 4 limbs. If you want to read an interesting book, try "Fortunate Son" by Lewis Puller Jr. Lt Puller was the son of 5 time Navy Cross recipient and former

2nd Marine Division Commander Chesty Puller. Lt Puller stepped on a booby trapped 105 mm artillery round in Vietnam. He was medevacked to a field hospital and left on a cot in the corner of the tent.

He waited until all the other Marines had been attended to, and then asked the doctors what they intended to do for him. He heard them mutter "Jeezus, he's still alive". So they went to work on Lewis Jr and he

returned to the United States as a wheel chair bound paraplegic. He accepted the Pulitzer prize for his book, before committing suicide.

Medical resources are limited. Doctors choose to fix that which can be fixed. That which has no known cure or obvious treatment is subject to triage.

psychiatry is the triage ward of neurology.

 

[eddy1886]

One psychiatrist tells you one thing, another tells you the opposite, meanwhile you're the one who has to suffer for their mistakes when they prescribe a wacky medication or take you off of something too fast or just keep prescribing benzos until you become dependent and your anxiety gets worse. Every medication they give you is just a shot in the dark, and they all have their own personal preference. Personal preference belongs in art, not sciences, especially when it comes to your health. 50 years or so from now when they look back at our psychiatry they'll probably consider it barbaric. I'll admit that brain medication does help some, but it hurts some too, even ruins lives, and it has never helped me. Many of us have tried psych med after psych med and have nothing to show for it but worsening mental health and unbearable side effects (that psychiatrists dont understand and cant explain). I wish I had been born in a time where psychiatry was much more advanced. Just a little rant, I hope I'm wrong and you all have good experiences with meds of course.

At best the majority of them are guessing whats wrong with an individual...

The same applies to GPs as regards physical illness...

When you present with symptoms they either open a manual or do a google search...Sure I can do that LOL...How many of us on here only found out what was truly wrong with us as a result of Dr Google.....I know thats how I truly discovered what was wrong with me....I had DP for years before the internet was able to tell me what was wrong....All the GPs, Therapists and Psychiatrists I saw up until that point just took my money and threw meds at me as a trial and error process...

Psychiatry is truly in the dark ages and if you dont have lots of money you will be lucky to get treated anyway...Treated Properly that is I mean....And if you are an everyday person who is not wealthy and have to deal with the public health services supplied by your country best of luck....Most of them have long waiting lists and then eventually when you do get seen they will literally just guess and throw meds at you anyway.......

The fact is to receive proper blood tests, brain scans, deficiency tests, therapy, coping techniques etc etc to truly get to the source of our problems costs lots and lots of money and the average person is never gonna receive such treatment...As a result our health services throw band aids on our mental and physical health problems and the pharmaceutical companies get richer and richer as a result...

Welcome to the capitalist western world everybody....Where only the rich and famous matter....The rest of us are just guinea pigs and statistics....

 

[Chip1021]

Sounds like reckless endangerment to me. Maybe even attempted murder.
Why aren't these reptiles held responsible for their blatant professional negligence anywhere in the world?

Because it's not considered professional negligence if it is widely accepted practice within the discipline.

 

[PerfectFifth]

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/serotonin-prozac-gut-microbiota

Pretty interesting article about a new study. It suggests that antidepressants mess with the gut's microbiota.

 

[forestx5]

The sad thing about psychiatry, is that the expectations for positive outcomes are low. Trial and error is not the most efficient method of diagnosis or treatment. It seems the most that is hoped for is that something can make you feel better. Not cure you, not address the core issue of your discomfort, but simply to

make you feel better. You can get that less expensively from most any street corner in any medium size city. I was treated by 3 psychiatrists for over 20+ years. I had a pretty good rapport with my last p-doc. We both knew he wouldn't reach for a reference manual to

save my life. I explained to him that I believed I had discovered the origin of my illness and it was seizure related. I told him I wanted an EEG. He didn't say "I'll order one for you". He said "Go get one". LOL So I did, and the results led to our parting ways.

They were all lazy whores, spinning the turn styles for their healthcare conglomerate.

They worked all the overtime they could get. And, the system regulated the competition such that if someone needed to see a psychiatrist in our area, they had to wait 6 months for an appointment.

I've read where 30% of US health care expenditures are for mental health care. And, that's just how the psychiatry department likes it. I think the real reason the US has an embargo on Cuba, is that Cuba offers the same quality medical care as the USA (according to the World Heath Organization ratings),

and charges about 15% of what the US charges. If the US wants to make a major improvement to health care, they need only to subsidize flights to Havana. Cuba has more doctors per capita than any nation in the world, save Italy. They also are conducting world class brain research, and medical

expertise is one of Cuba's largest exports. Viva La Revolution! Anyone who suggests that health care in the US is a free market operation is a dupe. If you intend to provide competition, you will never receive a license from our state's licensing department. There is enough money

being made in health care, to cover legislative expenses and establish a crony capitalist's system of health care, which is how the US operates today.