Psychiatry demoralization

[Neurosis]

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I know as a pre-med it's far too early to concern myself with medical specialties, but at the same time psychiatry really is what first procured my interest in medicine in the first place. That being said, why is there such demonization/controversy when it comes to Psychiatry? And no, I'm not just talking about scientology, but in general. I realize it may be less "concrete" than other sciences, but still what makes Psychiatry a pseudoscience? Or for that matter a Psychiatrist a "fake doctor".

 

[mitchlucker]

I know as a pre-med it's far too early to concern myself with medical specialties, but at the same time psychiatry really is what first procured my interest in medicine in the first place. That being said, why is there such demonization/controversy when it comes to Psychiatry? And no, I'm not just talking about scientology, but in general. I realize it may be less "concrete" than other sciences, but still what makes Psychiatry a pseudoscience? Or for that matter a Psychiatrist a "fake doctor".

I've never heard of such stigma.

The only thing I've heard is that you have to be crazy to go into psych. This is from other doctors. Haven't heard much else other than what's said in movies, but I don't pay much attention.

 

[Neurosis]

I've never heard of such stigma.

The only thing I've heard is that you have to be crazy to go into psych. This is from other doctors. Haven't heard much else other than what's said in movies, but I don't pay much attention.

 

[Neurosis]

and...
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b30iwhEw9ho[/YOUTUBE]

🙁

 

[deleted357625]

I know as a pre-med it's far too early to concern myself with medical specialties, but at the same time psychiatry really is what first procured my interest in medicine in the first place. That being said, why is there such demonization/controversy when it comes to Psychiatry? And no, I'm not just talking about scientology, but in general. I realize it may be less "concrete" than other sciences, but still what makes Psychiatry a pseudoscience? Or for that matter a Psychiatrist a "fake doctor".

social science maybe? Mainly because all they do is look at you and give you a drug without any clinical test being given.

 

[deleted357625]

and they have a book full of "mental illnesses" and have millions of drugs to cure each mental illness

 

[mitchlucker]

Based on that, it's probably due to early psychoanalysts.

I don't think anyone intelligent would say that psychiatry is a pseudoscience. It's ar medical specialty like any other. You're just dealing with brain/mental disorders, and some people still can't accept that biochemical imbalances lead to these and must be corrected. Therefore, you're treating "disorders" that could potentially be completely 'scripted' to the untrained person.

 

[mitchlucker]

social science maybe? Mainly because all they do is look at you and give you a drug without any clinical test being given.

Is this a joke?

 

[Neurosis]

social science maybe? Mainly because all they do is look at you and give you a drug without any clinical test being given.

So being a social science invalidates its use in the medical world? Also, I was under the impression that observational therapy may be congruent to clinical testing, after all we're dealing with mostly noncorporeal symptoms of mental diseases.

 

[Neurosis]

Is this a joke?

i'm guessing not.

 

[HH Holmes]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrIpPqcln6Y[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Neurosis]

[YOUTUBE]UrIpPqcln6Y[/YOUTUBE]

Lmao , put me in a better mood.

 

[HH Holmes]

Lmao , put me in a better mood.

You're in a bad mood because you're a pre-med who's upset that people on an internet forum do not like the field of psychiatry?

I'm glad my YouTube clip cheered you up, sport.

 

[Neurosis]

You're in a bad mood because you're a pre-med who's upset that people on an internet forum do not like the field of psychiatry?

I'm glad my YouTube clip cheered you up, sport.

never said i was in a bad mood. never said i was upset because of others opinions. the video just made me in a better mood than i was.

 

[HH Holmes]

never said i was in a bad mood. never said i was upset because of others opinions. the video just made me in a better mood than i was.

👍

 

[JESSFALLING]

Psychiatry is neither pure science, social science, or philosophy....Rather, it simply is a 'best-attempt' effort at blending all of these specialties together in a holistic attempt to help. Psychiatry, above all other specialties, shows that medicine truly is an "art" and a "science".

 

[Neurosis]

Psychiatry is neither pure science, social science, or philosophy....Rather, it simply is a 'best-attempt' effort at blending all of these specialties together in a holistic attempt to help. Psychiatry, above all other specialties, shows that medicine truly is an "art" and a "science".

Gave me goosebumps.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Psychiatry has a long history of being a very awful specialty. From the historic asylums to psychosurgery and ECT to blind pharmacology. It's today that it has chilled out, but still a lot of people find issue with drugging people to change their behavior, if not changing them entirely. They also don't like that psychiatry isn't the most objective science, so while we understand that a pharmaceutical does this, but we might not understand why, like with atypical anti-psychotics.

 

[Eric01]

Well remember Psychiatry in the early days did not have the tools to treat the diseases. Just like we didn't have antibiotics to treat infectious disease. That lead to improvised therapeutic strategies that I believe contributed to the (still standing) stigma. Things like subconscious theory, repressed memories, basically intangible things influencing the makeup of disease. These were not altogether logical connections to make, and so the impression of psychiatry was that of a pseudo or imaginative science.

I don't really know how one can dispute that chemical imbalances are what contribute to mental illness. To deny the fact that all mental illness has physiological manifestation is to be completely ignorant of data, facts, and the long history of clinical studies demonstrating things like maoi's drastically improving cases of severe depression, and anxiety disorders. Other drugs like SSRIs, treating depressive/anxiety disorders as well. Antipsychotics successfully treating previously intractable schizophrenia.

Also peripheral support such as patients with dopamine deficiency in parkinson's disease having significantly higher rates of social anxiety disorder than the general population.

Now, alternative treatments exist such as CBT for anxiety disorders, but this too has a physical mechanism involved, as shown by physical augmentation with drugs that work with CBT to better the results. The brain has many pathways, but the fact that a non medication based treatment is effective does not disprove the larger dataset that medication is the predominant treatment of mental illness and hence mental illness is a physical manifestation.

 

[aSagacious]

I'll share my opinion on why I consider psychiatry less 'sciency' than some other specialties, but with the disclaimer that it is only my opinion and I don't pretend to represent the general opinion of others. Additionally, I am but a lowly premed and only have the perception of what I've learned in my psych/neuro courses and what I've read elsewhere.

Of all of the organs, I think we understand the brain the least (or at least the physical mechanisms underlying cognition). By contrast, we understand exactly how the heart beats, how the kidney filters, how the GI tract digests/absorbs, etc. For this reason, much of psychiatry (though this is can be generalized to all of medicine to some extent) is conjecture, or at least less evidence-based than it should be. By that I mean that medications or therapy techniques are simply aimed at alleviating symptoms, rather that curing disorders (simply because the origins of the disorder are often unclear). In this way, psychiatry separates itself to some extent from many of the other disciplines, though I would not go so far as to label it better or worse than any other specialty, it just isn't for everyone (I certainly would not be able to be a psychiatrist).

 

[willen101383]

Psychiatry has a long history of being a very awful specialty. From the historic asylums to psychosurgery and ECT to blind pharmacology. It's today that it has chilled out, but still a lot of people find issue with drugging people to change their behavior, if not changing them entirely. They also don't like that psychiatry isn't the most objective science, so while we understand that a pharmaceutical does this, but we might not understand why, like with atypical anti-psychotics.

aaaand SSRIs considering the serotonin theory of depression has shown to be false.

 

[willen101383]

Well remember Psychiatry in the early days did not have the tools to treat the diseases. Just like we didn't have antibiotics to treat infectious disease. That lead to improvised therapeutic strategies that I believe contributed to the (still standing) stigma. Things like subconscious theory, repressed memories, basically intangible things influencing the makeup of disease. These were not altogether logical connections to make, and so the impression of psychiatry was that of a pseudo or imaginative science.

I don't really know how one can dispute that chemical imbalances are what contribute to mental illness. To deny the fact that all mental illness has physiological manifestation is to be completely ignorant of data, facts, and the long history of clinical studies demonstrating things like maoi's drastically improving cases of severe depression, and anxiety disorders. Other drugs like SSRIs, treating depressive/anxiety disorders as well. Antipsychotics successfully treating previously intractable schizophrenia.

Also peripheral support such as patients with dopamine deficiency in parkinson's disease having significantly higher rates of social anxiety disorder than the general population.

Now, alternative treatments exist such as CBT for anxiety disorders, but this too has a physical mechanism involved, as shown by physical augmentation with drugs that work with CBT to better the results. The brain has many pathways, but the fact that a non medication based treatment is effective does not disprove the larger dataset that medication is the predominant treatment of mental illness and hence mental illness is a physical manifestation.

I dont think anyone doubts that SOME cases genuinely have some sort of biochemical issue. But what about the depressed individuals who are depressed due to life circumstances? Life circumstances have altered the way they view themselves and their situation. I wouldnt say that is a biochemical imbalance.

Basically what I am getting at is that for every individual who genuinely benefits from psychopharmacology, many more are frivolously put on drugs. Putting a normally high functioning individual on a SSRI because their dog was put to sleep....only to have that patient in sheer hell for 6 months due to SSRI discontinuation syndrome, isnt really a good strategy for treatment.

I think psychiatry has its merits...but I also think CBT/DBT/talk therapy have merits far in excess of what pharm provides for MOST pts.

 

[gettheleadout]

aaaand SSRIs considering the serotonin theory of depression has shown to be false.

Though SSRI's are still effective.

 

[willen101383]

Though SSRI's are still effective.

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/303/1/47.short?home

I sort of think this study exemplifies what I was saying. Mild to moderate (life cirumstances type stuff) minimal to no benefit vs placebo. More severe symptoms....increasing benefit over placebo.

SSRIs clearly work for some patients.....who knows how though.

 

[AZFutureDoc]

I shadow several doctors who are very heavy hitters in academic medicine at some very high ranking schools, and they absolutely detest psychiatrists. They will go back and forth on horror stories with psychiatrists, and talk about their incompetence and status of the field as pseudo science. Apparently, this is a fairly common view because they talk about how all their colleagues feel the same way. Lol I cannot even explain how much they hate it. I saw a resident get ridiculed for weeks, just because he once said that he strongly considered going into psych instead of surgery. To a lot of the more prestigious specialties, psychiatrists truly are not seen as actual doctors. Not my view, but I'm just sayin.

I am troubled by some of the controversy about the field tho. Around half of the writers of the DSM-IV receive money from pharmaceutical companies, and it really makes you wonder what their intentions are when they say you should take a certain drug. I saw a psychiatrist once, and she tried so hard to push meds on me. Just because I said I spent more money than I should have on some new clothes the other day, she suspected I had a mania. And tried convincing me that I was depressed, and wanted me to take antidepressants. Lol I'm extremely happy, and I have no idea what her deal was.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Though SSRI's are still effective.

On some people and probably it's not the best thing we could use. Seretonin is a part of the story, however like with dopamine and schizophrenia it's a much more complicated system. Like with schitzophrenia it's more likely glutamate problems which obstruct a pathway between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the basal nucleus. And with depression there is likely a huge complex system, which a different series of non-seretonin based drugs will work on better.

 

[ponyo]

Well remember Psychiatry in the early days did not have the tools to treat the diseases. Just like we didn't have antibiotics to treat infectious disease. That lead to improvised therapeutic strategies that I believe contributed to the (still standing) stigma. Things like subconscious theory, repressed memories, basically intangible things influencing the makeup of disease. These were not altogether logical connections to make, and so the impression of psychiatry was that of a pseudo or imaginative science.

Of all of the organs, I think we understand the brain the least (or at least the physical mechanisms underlying cognition). By contrast, we understand exactly how the heart beats, how the kidney filters, how the GI tract digests/absorbs, etc. For this reason, much of psychiatry (though this is can be generalized to all of medicine to some extent) is conjecture, or at least less evidence-based than it should be. By that I mean that medications or therapy techniques are simply aimed at alleviating symptoms, rather that curing disorders (simply because the origins of the disorder are often unclear). In this way, psychiatry separates itself to some extent from many of the other disciplines, though I would not go so far as to label it better or worse than any other specialty, it just isn't for everyone (I certainly would not be able to be a psychiatrist).

👍

A few big problems with psychiatry... just my personal opinion:

1. The specialty's recent f***-ups are, well, recent, and extremely outrageous. One problem with psychiatry is that unlike all the other specialties in medicine, for which the primitive days are far in the past, people still vividly remember the days of lobotomies and psychoanalysis and use those things to judge psychiatry as a field today.

2. Nobody knows how anything works. Even now psychiatrists have a very minimal understanding of the neuropsychopharmacological basis of what they're doing. I actually do pharmacological research on the serotonin transporter, which is obviously one of the most popularly medicated target in psychiatry, and we have no idea how it really works, either on a molecular basis or in the context of the serotonergic pathways in the brain.

3. Research is incredibly difficult due to the shortage of measurable variables as well as a lack of animal models, so progress is slow. It's not hard to create a rodent model of cancer. Pretty much impossible to do that with any psychiatric disease. Everything you measure has enormous error bars, especially for the affective disorders. Also, autopsies are clearly not as helpful as they were for the development of other specialties.

4. Patients & families often blame the perceived incompetence of the psychiatrist rather than the complexity of the disease. Studies have shown that even though people understand scientific literature in psychiatry & psychology just as poorly as they understand scientific literature in the hard sciences, they think that the former is easier because it is phrased in more understandable vocabulary. Therefore there seems to be a prevailing view that psychiatric disorders should be somehow "easier" to fix than disorders in other specialties, even though this really isn't true.

 

[gettheleadout]

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/303/1/47.short?home

I sort of think this study exemplifies what I was saying. Mild to moderate (life cirumstances type stuff) minimal to no benefit vs placebo. More severe symptoms....increasing benefit over placebo.

SSRIs clearly work for some patients.....who knows how though.

Oh I agree that they shouldn't be a go-to fix for every patient who comes in depressed, I just meant they're not useless. For patients with a family history of depression or other psych problems, with persistent or pervasive depression unrelated to life circumstances, I'd say they're a good bet.

On some people and probably it's not the best thing we could use. Seretonin is a part of the story, however like with dopamine and schizophrenia it's a much more complicated system. Like with schitzophrenia it's more likely glutamate problems which obstruct a pathway between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the basal nucleus. And with depression there is likely a huge complex system, which a different series of non-seretonin based drugs will work on better.

No doubt if there is a pharmacological breakthrough utilizing a different mechanism more efficiently, they will be replaced by some different class of drugs.

 

[StudyShy]

Psychiatry is probably the easiest specialty. There are psychiatrists on our mental health unit who diagnose everyone with bipolar disorder disorder. Everyone. How easy is that? You have hallucinations? You have bipolar disorder. You get depressed? You have bipolar disorder. You complain of anxiety? You have bipolar disorder. I'm not even sure that mood stablizers help those people. Whenever I see this, I cringe. It didn't seem that bad in psych 5 or so years ago when I worked there as a student. Unfortunately, we didn't really help patients back then either.

 

[Shufflin]

I always find it amusing when pre-meds discuss medical fields and make sweeping generalizations.

Wait until you actually get into medical school, have endured 4 years of training, worked along side physicians across multiple disciplines - then start discussing psychiatry (or any other field). You will shun this advice now, but agree with it if and when you reach your 4th year.

Psychiatry is extremely crucial in the medical care of patients, and improves lives (and many times saves them) on a daily basis. It is very rewarding and the patients are grateful. But you can't see this now because you stand outside of the bubble. Good luck.

 

[Neurosis]

I always find it amusing when pre-meds discuss medical fields and make sweeping generalizations.

Wait until you actually get into medical school, have endured 4 years of training, worked along side physicians across multiple disciplines - then start discussing psychiatry (or any other field). You will shun this advice now, but agree with it if and when you reach your 4th year.

Psychiatry is extremely crucial in the medical care of patients, and improves lives (and many times saves them) on a daily basis. It is very rewarding and the patients are grateful. But you can't see this now because you stand outside of the bubble. Good luck.

I wouldn't say this exactly, I was a patient in a psych ward during my final year of high school. Anyway, for the most part what I'm getting from these posts are a) mind is complex b) drugging everyone with any sort of ailment is only proving the point of anti-psychiatry opposition c) it's not as advanced/old as other specialties.

 

[Eric01]

I think psychiatry has its merits...but I also think CBT/DBT/talk therapy have merits far in excess of what pharm provides for MOST pts.

I don't know how much I agree with this, it depends on who we're talking about as patients. I do think that in recent years the sensitivity to diagnosing someone with mental illness has become too high. For the patients who don't have mental illness, and instead have an explicable cause for being depressed in terms of life circumstances, I would say yes, they should probably go to talk therapy or go into CBT.

CBT is probably the most effective psychotherapy, and it's mostly indicated for anxiety disorders. It's been shown to be most effective for patients with OCD, achieving the highest effect sizes and remission rates. However, for things like social anxiety disorder, it tends to hover around 20% of patients achieve symptom remission. (Which isn't much higher than 10% or so placebo remission)

Talk therapy is just completely useless for any type of anxiety disorder, and I'm just using clinical data when I say that.

Also there is a lot of fraud when it comes to CBT, it requires a lot of resources to actually run a successful CBT regiment, things like access to exposure sessions that a lot of therapists in private practice do not engage in. Without that component of physical engagement, it's basically just talk therapy and altogether useless for the patient. Worse than useless, it's expensive too.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Psychiatry is probably the easiest specialty. There are psychiatrists on our mental health unit who diagnose everyone with bipolar disorder disorder. Everyone. How easy is that? You have hallucinations? You have bipolar disorder. You get depressed? You have bipolar disorder. You complain of anxiety? You have bipolar disorder. I'm not even sure that mood stablizers help those people. Whenever I see this, I cringe. It didn't seem that bad in psych 5 or so years ago when I worked there as a student. Unfortunately, we didn't really help patients back then either.

I don't think so... If the patients don't have all the symptoms described in the DSM then he has no right to diagnose the patient with bipolar disorder. There are also 2 bipolar disorders also. It also difficult as it requires intense patience and the ability to walk off all the crap you see in your day.

 

[isoquin]

I think a large part of it comes from historic context. Thankfully, the field is a bit more evidence based, to the best of the evidence that's available.

But here's the kicker: as soon as anything in psychiatry has a fully understood pathophysiology and effective treatment, it's not called psychiatry anymore. It's called Neurology. 😛

 

[Bartelby]

There are psychiatrists on our mental health unit who diagnose everyone with bipolar disorder disorder. Everyone. How easy is that? You have hallucinations? You have bipolar disorder. You get depressed? You have bipolar disorder. You complain of anxiety? You have bipolar disorder. I'm not even sure that mood stablizers help those people. Whenever I see this, I cringe. It didn't seem that bad in psych 5 or so years ago when I worked there as a student. Unfortunately, we didn't really help patients back then either.

I think this is a good illustration of why many people dislike Psych-- they imagine that it is as described above. I have worked in several different psych settings and nothing was remotely like StudyShy describes. StudyShy, how many people are on that unit? How many have a bipolar diagnosis? Is it a referral center for bipolar disorder? Are people with a sole complaint of 'anxiety' really being labelled 'bipolar?' A place like you are describing is obviously bad, but I would argue that it doesn't really exist (or at least is very rare).

For those readers with an open mind, go shadow or work in a psychiatry unit or clinic. I think you will find that a lot of patients are far beyond "hm, I'm a little sad" (MAJOR DEPRESSION!) or "I bought an expensive shirt last week" (BIPOLAR!). A lot of these people are genuinely and tremendously suffering and really need help.

Ideally, should we focus on different treatments? For many disorders (for instance depression) I think the answer is yes. Exercise has been consistently demonstrated to help in recovery from depression. Improving a patient's diet and getting them off of drugs and alcohol could help. Restructuring society to address issues of poverty and social justice could help. Getting those people into better life circumstances (personally meaningful work, lots of friends, a loving and caring family) could help. On top of all that therapy that addresses behaviors could help. I think that in an ideal world pharmacological solutions would feature less prominently, but honestly you could say the same about diabetes, HTN, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular diseases, COPD, and many other lifestyle-influenced or determined diseases. Sometimes a medication ends up being applied to a problem that would be solved with other changes in an ideal world. It's often the best you can do.

 

[StudyShy]

On some people and probably it's not the best thing we could use. Seretonin is a part of the story, however like with dopamine and schizophrenia it's a much more complicated system. Like with schitzophrenia it's more likely glutamate problems which obstruct a pathway between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the basal nucleus. And with depression there is likely a huge complex system, which a different series of non-seretonin based drugs will work on better.

I don't believe that schizophrenia exists from what I have seen in the hospital (this was sarcastic). There are no more schizophrenic patients. The ones who were diagnosed with schizophrenia 5-7 years ago, who I had as patients, are ALL diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I have not seen anyone being diagnosed with schizophrenia. lol

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

I don't believe that schizophrenia exists from what I have seen in the hospital. There are no more schizophrenic patients. The ones who were diagnosed with schizophrenia 5-7 years ago, who I had as patients, are ALL diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I have not seen anyone being diagnosed with schizophrenia. lol

Because now adays schizophrenia is treatable and you almost never have to keep them in an inpatient setting. Anyways schitzophrenia is a rare disorder, and we know it exists and we can even cause people to feel similar symptoms, positive and negative, through the use of PCP or angel dust I.e the way we make animal models.
Anyways, what do you believe schitzophrenia is a result of malingering or just a bunch of disorders which are under a similar umbrella? Which could be true as it possible that schitzophrenia could be caused by many different things which cause similar things.

 

[StudyShy]

I think this is a good illustration of why many people dislike Psych-- they imagine that it is as described above. I have worked in several different psych settings and nothing was remotely like StudyShy describes. StudyShy, how many people are on that unit? How many have a bipolar diagnosis? Is it a referral center for bipolar disorder? Are people with a sole complaint of 'anxiety' really being labelled 'bipolar?' A place like you are describing is obviously bad, but I would argue that it doesn't really exist (or at least is very rare).

It's a 15-patient (inpatient) unit in our hospital. We call it, "the view." We also have several outpatient units. Everyone has bipolar disorder. For one physician, I saw only one patient who wasn't diagnosed with bipolar disorder (major depression in remission), but that physician was covering for another physician.

And yes. We have had people come in with the sole diagnosis of anxiety be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This happens very frequently. Are they prescribed any antianxiety medications? Nope. They are put on a mood stabilizer. The nurses call B.S., and sometimes get kind of vocal about it.

One nurse got let go a year ago for arguing with one of the doctors about a person who was admitted into inpt psych who was there for depression and anxiety secondary to her divorce (never had psych problems before; husband was cheating on her). The patient refused her Lithium and desired to go home. The patient wanted the nurse to ask if she could go home. Usually, that means that a patient signs a "three day." It's up to the doctor if the patient is safe to go home or not or if the patient will have to go to court. The nurse asked the physician if she could go home. She was not suicidal, and the patient said that she felt like she could do better at home. The nurse was let go for asking/questioning the doctor's decision to make her stay. Here is how they argue anxiety for bipolar disorder: anxiety is sometimes accompanied by mania. If you are anxious, you are probably manic. lol (yeah right).

It's not a secret that everyone is diagnosed with bipolar disorder at our hospital. Everyone knows. The patients don't mind. I think that actually want the bipolar diagnosis. Ethically, I'm not sure if it is such a good thing. The DSM is not being followed by any means.

I stay clear. I know that they are being "looked at" by the state. They will decide if what they are doing is right or wrong. It's a long process, though. It took our hospital 2 years to get rid of a person who is accused of 6 M in Medicare fraud.

 

[StudyShy]

Because now adays schizophrenia is treatable and you almost never have to keep them in an inpatient setting. Anyways schitzophrenia is a rare disorder, and we know it exists and we can even cause people to feel similar symptoms, positive and negative, through the use of PCP or angel dust I.e the way we make animal models.

Schizophrenia is about as rare as Bipolar I is supposed to be. That would not explain then why there are no "schizophrenic" patients at our outpatient clinic.

Even though the psychiatrists on my unit would disagree, I know of a few that I think are schizophrenic. It's just not with the trend to diagnose people with schizophrenia. I absolutely do not think that schizophrenia is malingering. I feel that bipolar disorder is overdiagnosed at my hospital despite the claim that bipolar disorder is generally underdiagnosed elsewhere. I'm saying that I don't see the diagnosis anymore, at all.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Schizophrenia is about as rare as Bipolar I is supposed to be. That would not explain then why there are no "schizophrenic" patients at our outpatient clinic.

Even though the psychiatrists on my unit would disagree, I know of a few that I think are schizophrenic. It's just not with the trend to diagnose people with schizophrenia. I absolutely do not think that schizophrenia is malingering. I feel that bipolar disorder is overdiagnosed at my hospital despite the claim that bipolar disorder is generally underdiagnosed elsewhere. I'm saying that I don't see the diagnosis anymore, at all.

Except schitzophrenia and bipolar 1 are very different. Schitzophrenia can be seen objectively as they have small concentrations of grey matter soma's of neurons outside of their cortex. This due to bad migration of neurons during brain development.

 

[StudyShy]

Except schitzophrenia and bipolar 1 are very different. Schitzophrenia can be seen objectively as they have small concentrations of grey matter soma's of neurons outside of their cortex. This due to bad migration of neurons during brain development.

I agree. I feel that people here are being misdiagnosed. There are many different theories. Here, they believe in the "bipolar spectrum" where everything can fall somewhere on it even borderline personality disorder.

 

[deleted357625]

Is this a joke?

Nope.

 

[deleted357625]

So being a social science invalidates its use in the medical world? Also, I was under the impression that observational therapy may be congruent to clinical testing, after all we're dealing with mostly noncorporeal symptoms of mental diseases.

Social sciences such as psychology, psychiatry etc are controversial to many people.

 

[deleted357625]

I shadow several doctors who are very heavy hitters in academic medicine at some very high ranking schools, and they absolutely detest psychiatrists. They will go back and forth on horror stories with psychiatrists, and talk about their incompetence and status of the field as pseudo science. Apparently, this is a fairly common view because they talk about how all their colleagues feel the same way. Lol I cannot even explain how much they hate it. I saw a resident get ridiculed for weeks, just because he once said that he strongly considered going into psych instead of surgery. To a lot of the more prestigious specialties, psychiatrists truly are not seen as actual doctors. Not my view, but I'm just sayin.

I am troubled by some of the controversy about the field tho. Around half of the writers of the DSM-IV receive money from pharmaceutical companies, and it really makes you wonder what their intentions are when they say you should take a certain drug. I saw a psychiatrist once, and she tried so hard to push meds on me. Just because I said I spent more money than I should have on some new clothes the other day, she suspected I had a mania. And tried convincing me that I was depressed, and wanted me to take antidepressants. Lol I'm extremely happy, and I have no idea what her deal was.

yea i was looking for that word. yea..you walk in and they claim you have a disease in matter of minutes and give you a prescribed drug to treat that so called disease.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

I agree. I feel that people here are being misdiagnosed. There are many different theories. Here, they believe in the "bipolar spectrum" where everything can fall somewhere on it even borderline personality disorder.

Eh, who am I to argue with experienced professionals. Oh well...

 

[SarahBellum1]

Correct. I took psychopathology last semester, and we talked about this quite a bit. The only "proof" of this lack of/imbalance of NTs that most people believe causes depression is that when given SSRI's, people feel happier! If you give someone a bunch of happy pills, of course they are going to feel better! That does not mean that a chemical imbalance is the problem. In fact, we had a researcher come speak to our class who is currently studying a genetic cause for depression, and her lab has found lots of evidence showing that it's not there isn't enough neurotransmitter in the synapse, but in actuality, it's a mutation of a gene coding for the serotonin transporter, so that the problem is really TOO MUCH serotonin! I wish I could find a research article on it because it was actually quite interesting stuff...pretty much debunking everything the common person believes about depression. It blew my mind...just thought I'd share, lol.

aaaand SSRIs considering the serotonin theory of depression has shown to be false.

 

[StudyShy]

I'm glad to here that. It didn't used to be bad. Just in the last 2-3 years I would say here. I used to be able guess the diagnosis (es) that the physican would write for any given patient, and we had a variety of different patient diagnoses unlike today. I believe that you can't or shouldn't place everyone in a one mold fits all.

 

[StudyShy]

Eh, who am I to argue with experienced professionals. Oh well...

I'd rather have you work at my hospital any day. I don't know what has happened at the place that I work at.

 

[Dr.Ray]

fyi i didnt read other replies so this might have been said already.

So i am also interested in psychiatry and have been wondering the same.

After shadowing and talking with couple psychiatrist, I realized that it comes down to simple fact. people fear (and often lead to hatred of) things that they do not understand. And it must be even more scary when the medicine and treatments "masses with your head."

Also some of the treatments that are actively being practiced to this day does look scary. cough cough electrocompulsive therapy.

You yourself, as a (future) doctor has to believe in evidence based practice and modern medicine and do not be swayed by what others think.

I mean.. haters will hate...

 

[nitemagi]

A lot of misinformation on this page.