How to get over "stigma".

[AntiKarateKid]

Med student procrastinating here but I believe the denigration of psychiatry is because modern emphasis on materialism, in a broad sense, leads to less acknowledgement of the ephemeral aspects of humanity. Look at the way we learn about the human body, by far the most common analogy is to a machine. Encouragingly,these days there's a positive push to acknowledge the intangible aspects of patients like their mental health and I can't tell you how many times us students keep hearing the phrase "Treating the WHOLE patient."

To sum it up, the depths of the human mind can't simply be laid out in a textbook for us to indisputably see that giving X antibiotic is effective against Y pathogen. And accordingly, successful treatment often doesn't yield instant gratification like an antibiotic regimen.

However, and I'm spacing my post out for emphasis, self help is the strongest medicine in terms of confidence, dietary changes, exercise, behavior etc. It takes extreme effort from the doctor effecting those changes and on the part of the patient to reform themselves, unlike say popping a pill. But who would denigrate a physician for making his patient exercise more, even though results take months and years to manifest? The same applies for treatment of the mind.

Appreciation for psychiatry requires that same personal effort on the part of doctors to see the patient as more inscrutable than complex than your cut and dry board exams have taught you. And just like patients who expect instant results and don't have the willpower to take that extra step themselves, doctors often suffer from that same lack of willpower that lets them appreciate a specialty that heavily relies on intangibles, personal judgement, and patient relationships.

If it's better to live like a lion for a day than a lamb for your life, then surely if psychiatrists can bring that lifelong lamb to at least cheetah or leopard level, if not lion, that should earn just as much applause as tacking on an extra few lamb years.

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[SourceOfDenial]

As someone who is completing their final year of psychiatry training and just finished interviewing across the country for palliative medicine fellowships, I can tell you how happy and thankful our collegues in internal medicine were to have psychiatrists entering palliative care. I find that stigma is most common in my patients, and it simply requires a quick 20 second explanation that I went to medical school.

 

[nancysinatra]

Encouragingly,these days there's a positive push to acknowledge the intangible aspects of patients like their mental health

It's all fine and great to acknowledge intangible aspects of patients, but it's another thing to fix them.

I can't tell you how many times us students keep hearing the phrase "Treating the WHOLE patient."

The reason you can't tell how many times you heard the phrase is because it's overused. They've been saying that forever. They were saying it when I was a med student, 10 years ago, and it was old then. Treating the whole patient just means being reasonably nice to the patient, and not overtly insulting them. Which, for some doctors, is actually hard to do, so they developed that phrase, I guess. I don't think it has exactly revolutionized medical care, or sent death rates plummeting, but I'm sure some nice young poster here will care to disagree with me.

 

[clausewitz2]

It's all fine and great to acknowledge intangible aspects of patients, but it's another thing to fix them.



The reason you can't tell how many times you heard the phrase is because it's overused. They've been saying that forever. They were saying it when I was a med student, 10 years ago, and it was old then. Treating the whole patient just means being reasonably nice to the patient, and not overtly insulting them. Which, for some doctors, is actually hard to do, so they developed that phrase, I guess. I don't think it has exactly revolutionized medical care, or sent death rates plummeting, but I'm sure some nice young poster here will care to disagree with me.

I understand that you have this very strong need to be "fixing" patients in some sense and that that is what you need to find medicine a rewarding occupation. Got it, sounds like you are making the right move to switch fields.

But I am not sure I have ever heard you lay out why your personal preference for concrete and definitive results translates into a logical entailement that every other avenue of human pursuit is pointless. Just to be clear "because it doesn't affect death rates" does not address this question.

 

[AntiKarateKid]

Actually "treating the WHOLE patient" does NOT just mean "being nice to the patient." I think that's a big misconception you're harboring. It means taking account their mental and social wellbeing as well. By your logic, when a patient comes into your office with hyperlipedemia, you'd just prescribe them statins and think you've "fixed" their problem. However, if you knew what the "whole patient" was, you would have first started with lifestyle modifications and an investigation into the pyschiatry behind their eating habits. Binge eating? Anxiety eating? Low confidence?

Getting them to exercise and think differently about themselves would probably be too "intangible" for the quick fix mentality. Besides, you're making some pretty big claims that psychiatric intervention doesn't change mortality. Not to mention failing to differentiate mortality from quality of life, i.e. crappy life of 80 years vs decent QOL and 80 years. Mortality benefit? No. Quality? Yes.

 

[Faebinder]

OP, this stigma is the very same reason I have a guaranteed well paid job... embrace it. Find your joy in research, knowledge and everything outside the hospital.

 

[JDoc9]

Hi guys. Sorry for the late reply. I have a bit of an update in this regard:

**** it. I want to be a psychiatrist.

 

[postbacpremed87]

Hi guys. Sorry for the late reply. I have a bit of an update in this regard:

**** it. I want to be a psychiatrist.

Not real until you videotape it and submit it to this thread. Record yourself breaking it to your family over the holidays.

 

[SeniorWrangler]

Great way to ruin the holidays! My parents were sitting shiva for a week.

 

[JDoc9]

Actually the cool part is, my parents are totally cool with it. They don't view psychiatry any less than any other speciality. As a matter of fact they think it's really interest and they're also happy that it provides a great lifestyle as far as work-life balance and that it's a very in demand and stable specialty.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

Here is a small list of parental responses I have heard of:

"What is wrong with neurology?"
"So what other specialties were you considering?"
"No really, stop kidding... I know you went to medical school to0 be a doctor."
"you know that would be a terrible waste of your education."
"Only crazy people go into psychiatry."
"far too dangerous, you know crazy people might try and kill you."
"If you wanted to do that, why didn't you just go into psychology?"

Anyone else have any good ones?

 

[Taddy Mason]

Anyone else have any good ones?

Recently told my dad I'm most likely either going to do psych or IM, but haven't completely ruled out anesthesia. His response - "All that time and money and you want to become a nut job, a glorified nurse, or a drug addict?" He was only being partially sarcastic.

 

[675015]

Recently told my dad I'm most likely either going to do psych or IM, but haven't completely ruled out anesthesia. His response - "All that time and money and you want to become a nut job, a glorified nurse, or a drug addict?" He was only being partially sarcastic.

Sounds like your dad is a surgeon?

 

[Taddy Mason]

Sounds like your dad is a surgeon?

He's a retired building inspector whose only exposure to medicine in 40 years has been 2 ortho evals, which makes his comment that much more ridiculous.

 

[Jules A]

Recently told my dad I'm most likely either going to do psych or IM, but haven't completely ruled out anesthesia. His response - "All that time and money and you want to become a nut job, a glorified nurse, or a drug addict?" He was only being partially sarcastic.[/QUOTE

Love it, legit lol'd. I'm sure we have all seen examples to support his assertion although I hope you feel free to follow your interests and have a wonderful career whatever the path.

 

[Amygdarya]

Anyone else have any good ones?

My mother said: "You want to work with those people? But they never get better? Why would you do that to yourself?" - there is a significant stigma against psychiatry and mental illness where I come from, exacerbated by the fact that psychiatry in that country sucks (which is to say psychiatry as it is known in the US doesn't exist there) and mostly serves for containment of severely - and yes, largely incurable - mentally ill; meanwhile, neurologists' offices are crowded with perfectly mentally healthy (as in "I don't need a psychiatrist! Are you calling me crazy???") people with crippling mood and anxiety disorders.

 

[HockeyPsyGuy]

How to get over stigma--

1) Become a psychiatrist and enjoy having an awesome specialty, excitement and andventure every day (that has been my experience as an intern so far) and enjoy an awesome life (that the 4th years and recent grads I know seem to have). Help and advocate for your patients more than most other specialties seem to do (from my obviously objective perspective). And enjoy your awesome life some more. My program is pretty tough. Didn't think I would see 90+ hr weeks in these times as a psych resident... but I'm still the least miserable of all the miserable interns across the medical profession that I am friends with.

What was I talking about? Oh yea, stigma. You'll forget all about it.

 

[SeniorWrangler]

The most important thing is that you're a REAL doctor and not one of those PhD dudes.

 

[quiet pines]

I've already forgotten all the stigma being in one of the most fascinating and flexible specialties on the planet. Who cares when your life is awesome.

 

[Blitz2006]

Take a look at the salary thread and if you see some of the numbers you'll quickly stop caring about stigma....

 

[Nasrudin]

The other part of "getting over" stigma. Is that part of it is quite well earned.

Part of the treacherous, and nearly absurd task of altering the consciousness of other beings, is that doing it badly, or at least half-hazardly, is a given.

Given the point of take off in this partly organized endeavor, took place far before anyone should be given the responsibility of such a thing. Or even yet, now, should be charged with such a ridiculous proposition--half-way between a doctor and a shaman and a priest--makes for some reasonable stigma.

The history of psychiatry in the past century is appalling.

And we come to it compromised. S/p the advent of biological determinism of psychopharm marketing of the 90's. s/p the heyday of psychoanalytic wizard school prominence. Entirely divorced from our traditional role as medicine men and shamans and village elder/counselors. And into the breach of a humanity that has lost its bearings of its traditional religious and social and relational moorings.

Being tasked with engaging DSM billing codes for an individual's spiritual malaise of any or all of the above.

We must be both deserving and owning of this stigma. If we are to have any hope of behaving honestly and with forthrightness.

 

[nancysinatra]

I understand that you have this very strong need to be "fixing" patients in some sense and that that is what you need to find medicine a rewarding occupation. Got it, sounds like you are making the right move to switch fields.

But I am not sure I have ever heard you lay out why your personal preference for concrete and definitive results translates into a logical entailement that every other avenue of human pursuit is pointless. Just to be clear "because it doesn't affect death rates" does not address this question.[/QUOTyou!E]

I disagree. I never said that "every other avenue of human pursuit is pointless." I do think that we as specialists should be accountable, however. If the work we do as specialists doesn't lead overall to declining rates of morbidity or mortality from the conditions that are within our specialty, then we aren't doing our our jobs. You would never tell an infectious disease doctor that their work in fighting malaria is "meaningful" even if malaria death rates rise right before everyone's eyes. You'd simply accept that that person is wasting their time. So why have a different standard for psych? Either we fix things, or we don't, but let's not deceive ourselves into thinking that we're being useful when in fact death rates from conditions we are supposed to treat are rising.

By the way, I have never said that "every other avenue of human pursuit is pointless." No, I'm just saying that if you're a doctor, your patients, and society, should live longer because of your work - and if they don't, you've failed, sorry to inform you. If you are an actuary or a journalist or other professional whose work depends on facts about declining life spans then good luck to you! If you're a doctor - well, sorry, but you've wasted your time!

 

[hamstergang]

No, I'm just saying that if you're a doctor, your patients, and society, should live longer because of your work - and if they don't, you've failed, sorry to inform you.

Does quality of life not matter, only quantity? Do you not consider palliative care doctors to ever be successful?

 

[Shikima]

Does quality of life not matter, only quantity? Do you not consider palliative care doctors to ever be successful?

RVUs dictate quantity, no matter where you go, medicine is assembly line work. The quality is always going to be subjective and a poorly measured metric.

 

[hamstergang]

RVUs dictate quantity, no matter where you go, medicine is assembly line work. The quality is always going to be subjective and a poorly measured metric.

Huh? RVUS dictate quantity of work, but I'm talking of improving quality of patients' lives. Your comment doesn't make any sense to me in the context of my post.

 

[Shikima]

Huh? RVUS dictate quantity of work, but I'm talking of improving quality of patients' lives. Your comment doesn't make any sense to me in the context of my post.

It's quantity and quality are being harped upon in medicine. One must be considered with the other. You won't escape this. The quality that is gained will always be subjective - there is no one metric that can adequately measure this. For example, you cannot measure 'improvement in a patient's life'. One way that we can do this is by spending more time with them, but then quantity suffers.

Feels almost like the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

 

[hamstergang]

It's quantity and quality are being harped upon in medicine. One must be considered with the other. You won't escape this. The quality that is gained will always be subjective - there is no one metric that can adequately measure this. For example, you cannot measure 'improvement in a patient's life'. One way that we can do this is by spending more time with them, but then quantity suffers.

Feels almost like the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Maybe it's the cold in still getting over, but you make no sense to me. There's a whole field within medicine dedicated to improve quality of life and not extended life. RVUs pay for the work you do whether that work makes a patient life longer, live better, or die tomorrow.

And there are certainly scales that work to measure quality of life.

 

[Shikima]

Maybe it's the cold in still getting over, but you make no sense to me. There's a whole field within medicine dedicated to improve quality of life and not extended life. RVUs pay for the work you do whether that work makes a patient life longer, live better, or die tomorrow.

And there are certainly scales that work to measure quality of life.

Reread it in after a week or 2, it'll make a difference. And then again after a couple of years post-training. It'll make even more sense.

 

[smalltownpsych]

It's quantity and quality are being harped upon in medicine. One must be considered with the other. You won't escape this. The quality that is gained will always be subjective - there is no one metric that can adequately measure this. For example, you cannot measure 'improvement in a patient's life'. One way that we can do this is by spending more time with them, but then quantity suffers.

Feels almost like the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

You're confusing quality of care which is what is being harped on by bureaucrats with quality of life which is what we are focused on. In other words, regardless of what the systems want us to do and how they pay us or measure the work we do, our job is still to try to improve our patients lives. Patient comes in and says my life is crap, can you help me doc? Sometimes we can and sometimes we can't and much of it is dependent on the patient themselves, but that is what we do. If my patient's lives don't improve in some observable ways, then I am not doing my job. With kids, I look at school performance as a great indicator. With adults, I tend to look at improved relationships, fewer trips to the ER, avoiding involuntary commitment, getting a job or getting a better job, etc. These are not the type of easily quantifiable metrics that the bureaucrats or systems are looking at, but these are the things that me and my patients care about.

 

[nancysinatra]

Does quality of life not matter, only quantity? Do you not consider palliative care doctors to ever be successful?

I think quality matters. My point was intended to be about accountability moreso than emphasizing quantity over quality. Not to be pedantic, but that's why I included the word "morbidity" in my response.

If I emphasized quantity, it is probably because psychiatrists often seem to promote their field as being almost entirely about suicide prevention. Think of the endless risk assessments we perform. (And come on, we all have five or ten friends who post on Facebook about Suicide Awareness Month and none who post about Personality Disorder Month or Anorexia Month.) Having dutifully performed thousands of (I would argue useless) suicide risk assessments it's hard for me not to conclude that my job is to a) avoid being sued and b) do so by creating the appearance that I am lengthening lives by intervening in would-be suicides - and that's it. I'm pretty sure I'm not actually lengthening many lives, however, because last I read, America's suicide rate was on the increase. Even in my local region, I'd bet that trends are no different.

I think that when therapy was a bigger part of psychiatry, and when personality and somatoform disorders were more a focus of treatment than they are today (of course that was in a less litigious era), that you might have been able to say that psychiatry had the ability to improve quality of life. The problem is, we don't do therapy anymore, by and large. We mainly only care about preventing this week's potential overdose or shooting death, so that we can avoid being sued. At least, that's how it seems to me, that our job is defined that way. And the more litigious society has become, the more defensive we have become, until we're in this situation where all we do is fill out PHQ9s and risk assessments, and prescribe 10 medications, and call that treatment.

Palliative medicine is very important, but I don't know of a single psychiatrist who would describe their work as palliative. Can you name an example? Suicide isn't legal, unlike cancer death, which is, so we're not really comparable.

 

[nancysinatra]

You're confusing quality of care which is what is being harped on by bureaucrats with quality of life which is what we are focused on. In other words, regardless of what the systems want us to do and how they pay us or measure the work we do, our job is still to try to improve our patients lives. Patient comes in and says my life is crap, can you help me doc? Sometimes we can and sometimes we can't and much of it is dependent on the patient themselves, but that is what we do. If my patient's lives don't improve in some observable ways, then I am not doing my job. With kids, I look at school performance as a great indicator. With adults, I tend to look at improved relationships, fewer trips to the ER, avoiding involuntary commitment, getting a job or getting a better job, etc. These are not the type of easily quantifiable metrics that the bureaucrats or systems are looking at, but these are the things that me and my patients care about.

But what you're doing is good, because you have specific measures, and you keep track of them. That will lead to better quality and, probably, quantity of life.

 

[splik]

Palliative medicine is very important, but I don't know of a single psychiatrist who would describe their work as palliative. Can you name an example? Suicide isn't legal, unlike cancer death, which is, so we're not really comparable.

Suicide is legal in all 50 state, and I think many psychiatrists would regard their role as being about symptom control (modern psychiatry certainly focuses on managing symptoms rather than treating disease), which is a palliative approach.

Also there is some emerging literature on the palliative approach to late-stage psychiatric disorders:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22311525
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4957930/

 

[nancysinatra]

modern psychiatry certainly focuses on managing symptoms rather than treating disease

So, if tapeworm disease experts decided to focus on "managing the symptoms" of tapeworms rather than getting rid of them (which can require surgical interventions), would that be a good thing? I think not!

 

[hamstergang]

Palliative medicine is very important, but I don't know of a single psychiatrist who would describe their work as palliative. Can you name an example? Suicide isn't legal, unlike cancer death, which is, so we're not really comparable.

I think you didn't follow what I meant. I was arguing against your statement by providing a counter example. Your claim: "if you're a doctor, your patients, and society, should live longer because of your work - and if they don't, you've failed." Counter example: palliative medicine doctors are doctors that specifically don't work to make their patients live longer, and they consider themselves successful should a patient feel better. So either you agree that your claim was wrong, or you try to argue that palliative care doctors aren't doctors.

Once we can agree that doctors can succeed by improving lives and not just lengthening lives, we can address the rest of your post. Just because you feel ineffective as a psychiatrist doesn't mean the rest of us are. My work is much more focused on improving quality of life by reducing symptoms and increasing ability to function than it is focused on pointless risk assessments. And I don't do any real therapy. The research supports that our meds are effective, so I don't think this is just my perspective.

 

[smalltownpsych]

But what you're doing is good, because you have specific measures, and you keep track of them. That will lead to better quality and, probably, quantity of life.

I don't necessarily track them in a statistical sense, but am aware and typically document on progress or lack of progress they are making in these areas. It is just part of my mindset that if what I am doing is helping then there should be evidence for that. If you think that too many psychiatrists or the field of psychiatry are not focusing on these objective measures of life functioning, you could be right. I see mental health people across the board neglect these and I think society as a whole is part of the problem. When both patients and practitioners continue to focus almost exclusively on symptoms, it is not surprising that lives don't improve.

Everyday I have patients who have problems with something in their lives and someone tells them they need their meds adjusted. I tell them they need to learn to handle these types of situations more effectively and that just by talking to me about it they are already implementing a more effective coping strategy. My patients as they improve find that they have to fight the pressure coming from others to take more medications or change their medications or especially, god forbid, don't ever stop your medications.

 

[675015]

So, if tapeworm disease experts decided to focus on "managing the symptoms" of tapeworms rather than getting rid of them (which can require surgical interventions), would that be a good thing? I think not!

I don't think anyone is arguing that not curing an oddly specific example of a curable disease be a good thing... They are saying if you couldn't cure it, then it WOULD be a good thing to manage the symptoms. I know you are really into infectious disease. Much of what they do is simply managing the symptoms of HIV/AIDS. Is that a bad thing? Are they not doctors when they aren't curing HIV/AIDS patients? Symptomatic treatment doesn't mean people are neglecting simple cures... it just means they are doing the best they can with what they have. Many would argue that the more difficult to treat illness in medicine require the smartest doctors. Otherwise anyone could say "lab test shows you have 100% of X. X is treated with Y. Goodbye."

 

[Liquid8]

I didn't see this posted elsewhere, but "Choosing a Specialty: A Letter to a Medical Student" (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/873762) has been doing the rounds on a few of my email lists (and arguably may be worth a thread of its own), and I wanted to highlight some of the replies in the comments section are indicative of the stigma that those involved with psychiatry faced.

Eg. "I know that in a hospital environment, psychiatrists make more money than orthopedic surgeons, for doing exactly what? Even after 15 as a hospitalist that escapes me."

The commentator also takes a few veiled swipes at psychiatry not being real medicine, and rants about not being able to get CL consults, despite admitting that they only want them to see patients as an ass covering exercise.

What has surprised me is that out of the 270 or so comments, only a handful have stooped to denigrating the field or judging the author based on his profession which I dare say would not have been the case some years ago.

 

[Jules A]

I give you as an example the experts behind the treatment of DID in the 1980s.

Please let's agree to never mention it again.

 

[Winged Scapula]

I'm not really "into infectious disease," and certainly no ID doctors would take me for an expert. I just like coming onto this forum and debunking people's confidence in psychiatry with examples from more concrete specialties. And ID is pretty concrete. They are so effective in what they do. If they're not curing a disease, they're preventing it. Whereas we are so ineffective. We sit around talking about symptoms and not even fixing those. In some cases, we're so bad we make them worse. I give you as an example the experts behind the treatment of DID in the 1980s. But I probably don't even need to go that far back.

And yeah, there are infectious diseases without cures - HIV is an example, like you mentioned. But HIV will be cured long before we even have a reliable questionnaire for bipolar. I'm serious, psych is that bad. Even our questionnaires can't keep up. Ha ha ha ha ha. I'm sure I've offended 5 old-timers and 5 youngsters at least on this forum just with that statement alone. I love offending people on this forum, because it's so easy. People are so defensive - it tells you something. Everything else in my day might be going wrong, but I always know I can come on here and offend 5 or 6 MS3s who are psyched about psychiatry, and 1 or 2 interns or PGYIIs who have staked their careers on this specialty. If I can offend a seasoned attending, that's a real score for me. ;-)

Coming in to a specialty forum with the intent to troll or insult is a violation of the SDN Terms of Service and is taken seriously.

 

[Shikima]

Coming in to a specialty forum with the intent to troll or insult is a violation of the SDN Terms of Service and is taken seriously.

Meh, Nancy has been here a while. She isn't trolling, just gets ... passionate with discussions regarding psychiatry.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Meh, Nancy has been here a while. She isn't trolling, just gets ... passionate with discussions regarding psychiatry.

We have received numerous complaints regarding her over the last several months. There's a difference between being passionate and insulting your colleagues/other users.

I agree that psychiatry needs to be more evidence-based what the staff does not agree with is how that message is presented here.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[justfolks]

Just to offer a different perspective, as a patient it seems to me that how you live is at least as important, if not more so, than whether you live. Quantity without quality is not really worth having, so yes, treatment of symptoms has value even in the absence of cure.

I also think it's easy to overestimate what physicians in procedure-oriented specialties know/do/accomplish and underestimate what psychiatrists know/do/accomplish. For example, I have an elderly relative who has multiple cardiac-related health issues. The conditions have been treated for many years, and are under control, but have never been "cured." The absence of a cure in that case does not mean my relative's internist and cardiologist have failed, or that they don't have effective treatments and haven't accomplished anything. On the contrary, they have accomplished a great deal, as my octogenarian relative remains able to live independently and actively enjoy daily life, including part-time, intellectually stimulating work, interpersonal relationships, and cultural events and activities. If that result is good enough, and I think it's hard to argue that it's not, how can one argue that psychiatry is somehow less valid if it delivers the same things -- no cure, but the ability to engage in and enjoy daily life?

 

[Liquid8]

actually i am aware of a cash only TMS practice where the TMS is done by social workers (who do therapy at the same time!) sounds ridiculous to do therapy when you have a giant noisy magnet stuck to the side of your head but point is it is not cost effective for psychiatrists to administer TMS themselves when they could be making money seeing patients.

We recommend that patients having TMS wear earplugs because of the noise, so I can't really see how you'd do any meaningful therapy under those conditions!

 

[st2205]

We recommenced that patients having TMS wear earplugs because of the noise, so I can't really see how you'd do any meaningful therapy under those conditions!

Who said meaningful?

 

[Nasrudin]

We have received numerous complaints regarding her over the last several months. There's a difference between being passionate and insulting your colleagues/other users.

I agree that psychiatry needs to be more evidence-based what the staff does not agree with is how that message is presented here.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

I love how everyone says this and yet... all we need is a unified theory of consciousness to wrap it all up tightly.... I'll...uh...be over here...waiting...for that. Please do tell, if anyone see's this mythical creature.

 

[clausewitz2]

I love how everyone says this and yet... all we need is a unified theory of consciousness to wrap it all up tightly.... I'll...uh...be over here...waiting...for that. Please do tell, if anyone see's this mythical creature.

The intellectual graveyard of otherwise brilliant people from other fields.


I mean, obviously, because Roger Penrose already cracked it. It's quantum superpositions in microtubules all the way down! I'm surprised by your gross ignorance, @Nasrudin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of_the_Mind

EDIT: Seriously, though, it's not actually stupider than many other proposals for a unified theory of How People Think Real Good.

 

[DJspreadsheet]

I plan on getting over the stigma with a nice house, a well fed family, a sports car, and plane tickets to exotic lands.

 

[Nasrudin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of_the_Mind

EDIT: Seriously, though, it's not actually stupider than many other proposals for a unified theory of How People Think Real Good.

Hahaha.

Well shoot. I just had to spend 30 minutes on wikipedia figuring out what the hell your Roger Penrose reference meant Which is to say...thanks for the headache. I might be able to fool a couple of stoners into thinking i'm smart, as I gloriously F up a summary of it.

crazy. still. theories about what is consciousness would be only a starting point of sorts. Even if it were possible. questions about what you should do with it. or how. or perhaps to what rhythm and melody should you jam with it. would remain unanswered.

 

[Ceke2002]

I told my Mum the other day that I was enrolling in my pre-requisite subjects for a Bachelor's in Psychology. When I explained what that meant, and what I was hoping to eventually achieve out of it (to work as a therapist), her response was something akin to an eye rolling 'Geez, why would you want to work with those loonies'. I just very calmly pointed out that I was one of 'those loonies', and left it at that. Funny she didn't really know what to say after that.

Bugger what anyone else thinks, if working in the mental health field is something you're passionate about then go for it, be proud of what you do, and never make excuses for wanting to help a certain patient demographic.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

Bligh me Ceke, I don't know much about psychology in Australia, but a BS in psychology in the US will allow you to ask if you want fries with that. A masters will let you apply to a Ph.D. program. A Ph.D. will allow you to hit a very crowded market. The good news is that the need to feed yourself will make you our boss. Psychiatrists have no business ambition generally. Best of luck with school, I know you will bring a lot of life experience to the field.