Psychiatry - the crazy people who treat our craziness

[Wraith]

Initial idea is good, but like anything you have the terrifying aspect of people misusing it and even lying about results because of personal reasons, and also human error. It's like the rumor that some diseases are not going to get cured by some companies because they want things to stay bad in order to keep customers flowing or some such, plus political and other advantage over some people. Are some people nuts? Yep, but anything that lends power over people be corrupted, and I think psychiatry today is totally corrupt.

 

[ultimate_racoon]

Is aspergers really a made up disease? Or is it real but most of them only pretend to have it to feel special? What if you think you have it could seeing a shrink really do any good? Asking for a friend.

 

[Croco]

Some people need psych meds, or they will go manic and end up being held in a jail psych unit until deemed competent to face the charges.

 

[He Who Points And Laughs]

I have mixed feelings about psychiatry. I respect it more than psychology, but it still has the problem of its subject itself being a variable. It seems less scientific than other fields in medicine. I don't trust the analysis, but at times it seems accurate.

 

[drfuzzyballs]

For me I'm happy with what they do, they give people pills and I go in looking for pills. I go to a psych office run by the county and it would be a complete shitshow if the other patients were unmedicated.

 

[Twitter Hate Mob]

It works moderately well, up until you have 'qualified psychiatrists' from Lagos or Islamabad deeming that patients brought into them with a registered address in another county are mentally ill because they show "an elated mood and are excessively drinking", as opposed to it just being a holiday for the so-called patients.

 

[Otterly]

U ok Hun?
(sorry, sorry, couldnt resist.)

Mixed feelings. I’ve worked with some psychiatrists who are deeply humane people and others who I wouldn’t confide what I’d had for breakfast in. It seems to attract a higher than normal proportion of odd people.

There’s a big divide between proper crazy and emotional stuff, as PPs have said. Sad vs bad. A small proportion of society cannot function, will never work, and are dangerous to themselves and others. We used to lock them up. We closed down the long term places and now we have people who just can’t function out on the streets. They’re a danger to themselves, to others and to public health. They need long term care places, closing down the asylums rather than reforming them was a big mistake.

For the sad, I think good therapy and cautious drug use can be beneficial for some. I also think a lot of what people experience as emotional type mental illness is a sane response to an insane situation. Our modern world isolated us, it bombards us with some stimuli, while reducing others, it keeps us indoors, and it doesn’t allow people to blow off steam healthily. When you read through a lot of patient notes you see a lot of SLS - shit life syndrome. You think ‘you poor sod I’m not surprised you feel bad.’
Depression and anxiety in particular i think are responses to non optimal environments. If you put a new mum in a situation where she has to go back to work weeks after birth, before she’s even physically healed, and she’s working with little family support and no sleep, you can’t be surprised when she’s got PPD. If you stop men from expressing any ‘man’ emotions and tell them they’re all toxic, those men are going to act out. If you tell a young girl she’s a boy because she’s into engineering, she’s going to be confused. So much of our modern life is just plain fucking with our heads. Consumer culture isn’t good for us. We dont have the extensive irl networks we used to. It’s no wonder everyone is depressed and on edge.
We still don’t really know how most of the psychiatric meds work. We are in the infancy of understanding the brain.

Christ I’d be terrified to read what a shrink thought of me...I don’t like opening up like that. Someone critiquing your psyche is quite a scary thought.

 

[GenociderSyo]

Some of the clinics I've worked in no longer even hire psychiatrists, they just hire APNs. The APNs end up being the diagnosticians and the people doling out the drugs for psychiatric issues. Which kind of says that all that extra schooling psychiatrists go to really didn't matter in the end when a nurse with much less extra schooling can do their job.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

I have mixed feelings about psychiatry. Every psychiatric doctor I've ever worked with to my knowledge has been a total hack. I think it's a necessary profession but the people currently running the show are a fucking joke. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though considering how easy it is to get a master's degree in psychology. I'm going to refrain from power leveling on this but let's just say I have it on good authority that they're doing everything but just handing out the degrees for free.

 

[RejectedLynx]

I personally have mixed feelings on the whole field.

Naturally, it's a soft science with a lot of unrepeatable conclusions and easy to manipulate data. Plus, with brain chemistry and drugs - it's a whole other mucked up data class and it's never going to be straight forward. However, as any medication we take, we are essentially the last line of testing subjects. Medication sure, is given to make us feel better, but we're essentially more data for the experiment.

That being said, I know psychiatrists who are genuinely want to help their patients. They don't like drugs, they want to do everything they can. However, even on personal experience, I know they're in the minority. Heck, my doctor prescribes more medication for my ass than some of these people. I know they're the minority and they treat their patients very well. Most of them have schizophrenia, delusions, and the like - and they do try. However, I know some who are fine the way they are and dole out drugs like they're candy. I also know that some psychologists and psychiatrists do stupid therapies that cost thousands of dollars to do knowing they won't help the patient.

I feel it's mixed because people are mixed. Hell, how many doctors go into that field cause they actually like people? How many people go into pediatrics despite not liking children? Some are of course going to want the easiest way out and have their patients as docile sheep as they can make them for whatever deluded reason. Some know that this medication might be the only way to make their shitty life stable for five glorious years. People hand over their souls for the dumbest of shit, some people might want to trade it with some happy pills and don't care about anything else and they're fine to oblige.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

Is aspergers really a made up disease? Or is it real but most of them only pretend to have it to feel special? What if you think you have it could seeing a shrink really do any good? Asking for a friend.

A non verbal learning disability is probably what a lot of these people actually had. Asperger's was once a fad, it was way over diagnosed at one point.

Criticize me for this, but I don't think someone can be Autistic (even mildly) if they just have isolated impairments. And then there was the fact that the other 91% of the Autism spectrum had an I.Q below 70 when people with Asperger's (9% of the spectrum) were completely unaffected by an intellectual disability. Something never seemed right about this.

 

[Ferryman]

I myself am currently studying psychology, particularly counseling and clinical psych, so this topic sorta hits close to home. I've volunteered as a de facto intern at both a psychologist and psychiatrist's private and public clinic respectively. For some reason I get the feeling that psychiatrists tend to be more cold and distant than your garden variety psychologist or counselor. Maybe the years of med school and the fact that more severely ill patients are directly sent to them has left them jaded, or maybe the ability to prescribe medications and being an actual doctor with actual medical knowledge gives them a different perspective, hard to say from where I'm standing. Ofc I'm biased as fuck since this is going to be my job one day, but I do well and truly believe that the field of psychology, and by extent psychiatry is very much a needed one, but not one without issues even I can see. There are indeed those who just want to get it over with and don't truly care about their patients well being and would much rather just pump them full of drugs instead of hearing them out and trying to help them through whatever it is they are dealing with. Just as well there are money grubbing shitheads that only care about their paycheck and absolutely rinse the people that come to them. Sadly their kind is in the majority these days, so at the moment it can be a bit of a dice roll, sorry to say.

A non verbal learning disability is probably what a lot of these people actually had. Asperger's was once a fad, it was way over diagnosed at one point.

Criticize me for this, but I don't think someone can be Autistic (even mildly) if they just have isolated impairments. And then there was the fact that the other 91% of the Autism spectrum had an I.Q below 70 when people with Asperger's (9% of the spectrum) were completely unaffected by an intellectual disability. Something never seemed right about this.

Autism, Aspberger's, Down's etc. are diagnoses based by in large on physical factors, mostly relating to genes and hereditary anomalies, the only reason people who have such disorders are sent to shrinks or counselors is because they can have "side effects" that can range from mild to really severe, I think. Haven't gotten that far down the rabbit hole yet, so forgive me if I'm wrong.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Psychiatrists don't want their patients cured, so they'll do everything in their power to drag out the problem for as long as possible. They do this because the more patients they cure, the less money they make in the long term. Psychiatry is a case of cutting gasoline with sugar after putting on newish brake pads. The only time they'll make a concerted effort to actually "cure" a patient, as in make them think they're cured so they'll go away, is when the patient is so repulsive that they personally can't stand hearing about it anymore, and this "cure" will more often then not entail just letting the patient indulge in their dysfunction wholeheartedly.

This is not my opinion, a psychiatrist told this to me once.

I ran across a quote of freud saying he couldn't take the trip to berlin because his most wealthy patient was going through a crisis and she might get better in his absence.

I was incredulous. Then I found the quote on a pro freud site, and they cut out the part where he said that. They still had the full quote elsewhere, but the cutout was conspicuous enough that it looked like there is more to it.

 

[Jan Ciągwa]

Everyone said it already, @Otterly did it best IMO. I'm just going to add that psychiatrist's main job is dealing with schizophrenics, dementia patients, old people who might croak on the spot if you're not careful with dosing and various pants-shitting retards, so be patient (har) with psychiatrists because your sadbrains is a small fish not worth hunting.

Also, psychiatry has no method to diagnose your brain chemistry, the high point is a brain scan to check for any abnormalities in structure. It's literally the blind leading the blind; you get a med (usually the doc's favourite one he prescribes to everybody out of habit) and if it doesn't work, it's dose upping time or change of meds. As long as you're not manic, psychotic or due to the ER, they won't care.

Psychiatry made a huge breakthrough in the 40s with MAOis and chlorpromazine, then it kept regressing for the past 80 years with "N-th generation drugs" being less effective and more expensive than the old ones. SSRIs are barely antidepressants, they're more anti-anxiety drugs than anything. If you're on "safer than TCA" Prozac you will die a long and painful death if you accidentally consume certain (common) antibiotics while on it - how's that less side effects?

And avoid neuroleptics like a plague if you're not psychotic or delusional. If your doc tells them they also act as antidepressants or sleep aid, switch that fool unless you want dementia and Parkinson's in old age.

 

[Billy Beer]

I'm a mong so can't express stuff as well as other posters have, bear with me.

Psychiatry is like mental martial arts, it's best to arm yourself in defense for people using it against you, which happens all day, every day; from sales to shit on the internet yadda yadda yadda.

Psychiatrists are usually grifters, as most cases of sadness or depression, pop-depression not genuine depression, can be solved in one or two sessions at the most! I know people who just need a slap (I'm not joking about the effectiveness of a physical attitude adjustment) but instead pay £30+ a week to attend councilling.

Psychology, like maff, Iniglish and soyence, should be compulsory learning in school.

Never take meds for mental illnessess, unless it stems from physical brain damage. You cannot cure a mental illness with physical pills. Pills can cure physical ailments like diseases or whatever, but not mental ailments. It's a massive grift designed to get you hooked for life.

Finally, everyone should be told (especially those on the internet) that it's OK to feel sad, down, angry, fed up etc. It's normal. What's not normal is heading to a comfy sofa to talk to a stranger about how you feel sad because your dog died. Feeling sad is a natural process, you have to swim in it, be part of it and in a strange way, enjoy it.

 

[unsafe]

Psychiatry in my country is a little different, since it's available for free to all citizens. 95% of psych meds are free, too. So there's less of the grifting aspect, however, I believe that in my country it's mainly used to section off the lolcows and keep them out of normal society.

In my experience, it's not a "quick fix" and many hospitalizations are changed to involuntary by the staff, leaving the patient without a legal right to leave or refuse meds. I know of people who have been in the same ward for 15+ years because they're legally confined to it.

A lot of these "involuntary" cases become testing grounds for various types of medication. You'll have patients who have been on 20+ different types of pills because the psychs want to see the effects.

 

[ClownBrew]

Psychiatry is a Hebrew gayop.

 

[mr.moon1488]

Some of the clinics I've worked in no longer even hire psychiatrists, they just hire APNs. The APNs end up being the diagnosticians and the people doling out the drugs for psychiatric issues. Which kind of says that all that extra schooling psychiatrists go to really didn't matter in the end when a nurse with much less extra schooling can do their job.

If true this is horrifying.

 

[GenociderSyo]

If true this is horrifying.

Sadly its very common here:

ONE psychopharmology course is all thats required to dole out psychiatric meds:

 

[doodoocaca]

What’s psychiatry doing about troons, again? Enabling it?

It’s so blatantly politicized, anti scientific, and predicated on coercion and shitting on human rights I can’t see it lasting much longer without a severe correction - likely after complete political capture on par with Soviet abuses. Sluggish schizophrenia, anyone?

Im honestly surprised it hasn’t been weaponized for politics yet but I’ll happily take bets on when that starts.