In all my years I've always assumed that psychiatry, medication, etc. were perfect and that psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. surely knew all the answers about our mental health. I hate having to accept the reality that there are not necessarily answers for every person, and that some things can't be fixed.
In all my years I've always assumed that psychiatry, medication, etc. were perfect and that psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. surely knew all the answers about our mental health. I hate having to accept the reality that there are not necessarily answers for every person, and that some things can't be fixed.
A lot of people assume that about all doctors, and it's far from true. Psychiatry is probably a tougher discipline to get right most of the time, less exact and more trial and error needed. I think the first time a parent or older loved one goes into the hospital is a moment of strong disillusionment for many smart people about how poorly our healthcare works. When people say "you need an advocate", i.e. a smart person in your family working on your behalf, that's because healthcare administration is poor. The family usually are the ones telling the doctor who's new that day what the patient has actually gone through in the past 24 hours, what actually happened, etc. Sad that there is virtually no accurate debriefing from well-educated doctor to well-educated doctor when responsibility shifts based on their time schedules, and that no one really cares. If the doc makes a mistake because the system sucked and they weren't well-informed, their take is simply that the system sucks and they can't be blamed, and few try to fix it.
What an odd faith so many of you have in psychiatrists! To me, in is par for the course for a psychiatrist not only to not know common side effects of drugs, but to confidently "correct" those more knowledgeable.
In all my years I've always assumed that psychiatry, medication, etc. were perfect and that psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. surely knew all the answers about our mental health. I hate having to accept the reality that there are not necessarily answers for every person, and that some things can't be fixed.
A lot of people assume that about all doctors, and it's far from true. Psychiatry is probably a tougher discipline to get right most of the time, less exact and more trial and error needed. I think the first time a parent or older loved one goes into the hospital is a moment of strong disillusionment for many smart people about how poorly our healthcare works. When people say "you need an advocate", i.e. a smart person in your family working on your behalf, that's because healthcare administration is poor. The family usually are the ones telling the doctor who's new that day what the patient has actually gone through in the past 24 hours, what actually happened, etc. Sad that there is virtually no accurate debriefing from well-educated doctor to well-educated doctor when responsibility shifts based on their time schedules, and that no one really cares. If the doc makes a mistake because the system sucked and they weren't well-informed, their take is simply that the system sucks and they can't be blamed, and few try to fix it.
What an odd faith so many of you have in psychiatrists! To me, in is par for the course for a psychiatrist not only to not know common side effects of drugs, but to confidently "correct" those more knowledgeable.