[Vent] What the fuck is psychiatry anyway??????

[l.a557]

I just quit my psychiatrist cause i kept forgetting to take my pills and I didn't have faith that i could keep up the regiment, so I ask him where i could go to get an official diagnosis because i thought if I knew exactly what i had and what to take I could be more motivated to take pills and actually feel better, and he tells me something to the affect of "oh, I won't know what you have until you try different pills and see what works for you." and Im like "but doc, I told you on the first visit that i think I might be borderline!" and he tells me "Well, you can medicate anxiety and depression, but you can't really medicate borderline." and Im just ?????????? then what the fuck am I here for? thought the point of a psychiatrist was to get diagnosed so you can take the pills you need, not eat pills until you know what you have, and now all of a sudden it's untreatable? Then my mom asks me what happened and I tell her, and then she's like "Well you gotta be open with your feelings if you want the psychiatrist to help you! They can only know what you have if you're honest!" and like, yeah, y'know what, it's probably my fault again. Fuck off. I just feel so god damn stupid, it was obvious what i needed to do in hindsight, and i somehow managed to fuck that up too.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

The pills are there to treat reported symptoms. While there isn't any medication that can treat BPD as a whole you can use them to treat certain underlying symptoms in order to make it easier to cope with, meds, such as using mood stabilizers. Along with that, the reason why they have to get you to try out a bunch of drugs may have to do with how diverse our brains tend to be. It's thought that due to each of our brains differing so much from each other, it may make it so that certain medications may respond better than others.

This isn't me defending psychiatry, btw, let alone the psychiatrist you are seeing (they seem to suck). Rather, I'm just trying to provide you with an explanation based on my limited knowledge of the subject.

 

[theboy]

A psychiatrist cannot diagnose at your first interview. Psychiatrists try different pills and dosages depending on your medical progress. Being honest with a psychologist or psychiatrist is really important because that way they will understand what is wrong with you.

It's hard but well... that's medicine I guess.

 

[Hollowman]

https://psychiatrized.org/donweitz/PsychiatryAsSocialControl.pdf

 

[J&L383]

A psychiatrist cannot diagnose at your first interview. Psychiatrists try different pills and dosages depending on your medical progress. Being honest with a psychologist or psychiatrist is really important because that way they will understand what is wrong with you.

It's hard but well... that's medicine I guess.

Unfortunately psychiatry is a lot of art rather than science. In fact all medicine is a lot of art but psychiatry especially so. And I suppose they don't want to give you a firm diagnosis because that locks them down in a particular direction, and then later if they're wrong they have to admit that they were wrong. In the end, most of them are just trying to make your life better somehow with the tools that they have.

 

[curiouscvnt]

Psychiatry is... a super new field outside of holistic or traditional medicine. The aim is, i think, noble and interesting: to try to marry understanding of behavioral health and physiological health / mind & brain. That said, psychiatry is probably still establishing itself in Western medicine, in the realm of molecular understanding of disease and health, and it has a long way to go as far as the brain / neuroscience is concerned.

Borderline personality disorder, bi- and unipolar depression, and other mood disorders don't have definitions that lend themselves to treatment or cure by chemistry. That is, the most robust, scientifically verifiable understanding / definition of such 'illnesses' is limited to behavioral terms, not physiological or neurological ones.

Let's put it this way, from someone who has education/experience in pharmacology and drug design, using cancer as an example:
Drugs (chemical interventions) work on the scale of cells and molecules in our bodies, and so the understanding of how they work and their development in the present lies at that level. Every time anyone takes a drug, they're nearly carrying out an experiment against their state without that particular drug.
For cancers, there is a scientifically validated definition for what cancer is as a disease (down to the cellular / molecular level), and a whole explanation for the progression of that disease in the body. Drugs for cancer that are being developed / discovered are tested by exposing tumor cells (whether they're grown as cultures, outside of a body, or in test animals) to the experimental drug and checking for changes in the size of the tumor.
For psychiatric illnesses (e.g. BPD, bi- and unipolar depression, anxiety) there is not a scientifically validated definition for what those 'illnesses' are on the cellular / molecular level. We have drugs like SSRIs that are prescribed for mood disorders, and some statistics that suggest they can reduce symptoms associated with such mood disorders as they are defined, often in combination with psychotherapy (another type of medicine / experimental variable unto itself). We say, as with SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), that such drugs may or may not be particular powerful accelerators or decelerators of some specific cellular activities in the brain, BUT no one actually has published proof for how perturbing such cellular activities is related to 'depression' or 'borderline personality disorder.' (an aside: this amounts to what might be interpreted as an extraordinary opportunity for $$$ in drug discovery, being that there exist multiple hypotheses for what depression even is, for example, so if you already have the means to invest, you can go for many shots on goal as possible in terms of projects whose goal is to develop a psychiatric medication. If the new drugs the safety tests in humans and show even just a hair of a positive difference over the current standard of treatment, you won't necessarily have a harder time persuading doctors to prescribe them than the next company with a drug for the same condition that works via a different mechanism)

Brain is not a synonym for mind.

 

[inconstantprayer]

Psychiatry is all part of this huge lie they want us to believe. Meanwhile they are being paid to rat you out and tell you what to think.

 

[Pluto]

 

[missedmybus]

Ask your psychiatrist to refer you to a neurologist, some issues can be physically found in brain scans. Psychiatrists generally are just overpaid script writers in my experience.

 

[missedmybus]

Sorry I reacted a bit too harsh above I think. Disregard what I said.

 

[Hollowman]

Sorry I reacted a bit too harsh above I think. Disregard what I said.

That wasn't harsh at all.

 

[divinemistress36]

View attachment 159079

Petting kittys is more helpful than any med

 

[ShatteredSerenity]

If you want a diagnosis without the medication trials, you can go to a psychologist and ask for a comprehensive evaluation. If you think you might be borderline the psychologist could be a lot more helpful because that disorder is treated through therapy, typically dialectical behavioral therapy. The psychologist can get to know you better and help you understand where medications might be helpful, then refer you to a psychiatrist for more targeted medication management.

Psychiatrists aren't bad, they just have a specific role and training. They can be wizards with medications, there's a huge variety of medications and they have to understand the effects, side effects, interactions, dosing, and more when they write prescriptions. It's extremely complex and they have a huge level of responsibility for the health of their patients. They don't usually understand the psychological aspects of the disorders they're treating with the same depth as a psychologist would, but they're experts at neurobiology and the medical side. Psychologists and therapists who understand the psychological aspects can collaborate with the psychiatrist to handle meds in order to provide you with holistic treatment.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

A shining model of compassion of course.

/s

 

[Nervous young man]

Its an industry so to some degree they have profit incentives.