Is psychiatry primarily about social control through medication as opposed to the support of individual patients and attempting to meet their range of needs?
I am not against medication but I am against a system that fails to see and respond to needs that affect the individual patient as opposed to things that might affect society.
It often feels as though all they are interested in is getting you to swallow some pills or to bend over for a jab.
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Iād be lying if I said I liked the medās, but they are a necessary evil.
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I think it depends on the office. Both exist, but itās definitely more common to find one that will just throw medication at you.
I just think that patients have needs,often chronic, that go beyond the need for acute,crisis intervention, and that are not always helped by a dose of medication.
I have noticed that a lot of psychiatrists are control freaks, they have huge Egos.
My current psychiatrist is telling me that I am confusing her with my diagnosis, she is now telling me that I am brainwashing her. Psychiatrists rarely admit when they are wrong - its always the patients fault.
I do think that that it is all about control, my psychiatrist is not open to the idea of me going down a bit on my dose - in the past she was open to it.
Take your meds at all costs is her Motto - I guess in a way it makes her feel more powerful.
I am starting to get a bit dissapointed in her atittude - doctors in general tend to have God complexes, she is no exception.
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That is very true. Psychiatrists especially, but often other mental health staff too, are notoriously bad at taking responsibility for their actions and behaviour.
Itās easier instead to blame/character assassinate the patient.
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YES. You finally worked things out & came to more of a realisation of the reality of how everything is. i think that most people do eventually.
Now acknowledge that there are far better ways of helping/supporting people, & your journey to the Dark side will be complete. 
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Yes, of course they are doing there jobs, and that is the very least that some of them are doing , but they have to cover their own butts when treating mental patients, and they cannot really do for us what we need to do for ourselves, they can only guide us ,perhaps, to how we can better help ourselves. My case in point is that I was told that I was diabetic and that I had to exercise and eat healthier foods. I donāt really do much exercise because of painful restrictions and lack of motivation ,but they should not intervene where the individual is still thought to be capable of bettering themselves on their own .
I need an outside stimulus, myself, so I have been ordering Sarcosine from this forums recommended companies and find it to be helpful in getting me more motivated. I take it daily along with other amino acids to boost brain health because without our health we have nothing to work with.
I have always agreed psychiatry could be better. I am not against medication but am against the over emphasis on it to the exclusion of social support.
It annoys me that they can soon chase me if I am slightly late for a depot and yet getting a supporting letter for PIP to me in a timely manner(social support) seems beyond their capabilities.
I am now anxious/stressed/wound up when I shouldnāt have to be.
They seem to say one thing and do another. IE patients are socially isolated so the intelligent solution in their eyes was to force the closing of a drop in and befriending service that helped people like me be less isolated. Have they offered/put in place any alternatives?-NO!!
Of course if I was to openly protest my place on the awkward,demanding, and troublesome list would be reactivated and a whole nasty can of worms reopened.
Itās a sad fact that for many patients forums like this are the only means to express frustration.
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I totally agree
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Well, i think that there are some very intentioned consequences to having a primary focus on a pathology/drug paradigm. Nothing i can do about it all. The alternatives are continually derided, attacked, ridiculed, denied & excluded - this is in part the result.
[quote=āfiremonkey, post:1, topic:35258ā]
It often feels as though all they are interested in is getting you to swallow some pills or to bend over for a jab.
[/quote]I totally understand that feeling. Zero empathy - all scrutiny & control. I hope God judges them each appropriately. I try to stay far away from my assigned psychiatrist & case worker, for itās all they talk about - meds & worst-possible case scenarios.
western society does not understand madness.
and feels uncomfortable aroundā¦madness.
psychiatry is their answer to ā¦madness 
take care 
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Pretty sure Iām starting to sound like a broken record, butā¦ Medication canāt do much more than give you some stability and a foundation to build on. Up to the individual to do the building. Itās not a magic wand that magically vanishes all the problems from your life so you can dance with unicorns in the clouds.
Usually what holds us back is ā¦ us.
Pixel.
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I have realized somewhere along the way that I have to contribute to my treatment with psychiatrists. Speak up and defend myself; see to it that they treat me as a friend and a person, not as an objective entity; make friends with my psychiatrist; work at being understood and make sure that I am being understood; donāt get obsequious; donāt blame them for your trouble-that isnāt going to help. The system is impersonal , but the parts in it are all made up of individuals some of them good, some mediocre, some just plain bad.
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Iām not too sure what you mean with social control, and wether it is truly opposed to the idea of meeting a patientās needs. In psychosis, we tend to be seriously out of touch with socially conditioned ways of going about. We act and speak in ways that are beyond the norms of what is appropriate given the circumstances. Of course, we experience those circumstances differently from how they are typically experienced. Psychiatry then could be seen as a way to get us back in line with the social norms that govern what actions and utterances are appropriate, and, in my view, to make us experience what is appropriate as well - I think there is normativity there as well.
I can see how such can be seen as a mechanism of control, and even one that imposes norms of experience and behavior upon a minority that deviates from them. You ought to experience like we do, and you ought to behave somewhat like we do. Some space for differences is allowed, but if behavior crosses some normative boundaries, treatment may be imposed.
In such a sense I can see how it is social control, how it is a way of getting/keeping people in line with norms. But I am not so sure wether this is opposed to the needs of the patient. I think many needs and desires I have can be met just by getting in line with these norms. I do not see them as merely repressive, although for the outsider that is the psychotic, they can be perceived like that. Yet they also enable ways of living that may be very rewarding to us. I enjoy sharing a world with people I care about, it makes for being intelligible, and I have needs and desires, likely conditioned by these very social ways of going about, that are only satisfiable if I walk in line.
During my first psychosis, at one point I decided to see it as psychosis rather than telepathy. This took sorting out my priorities. What was decisive for this to work for me, was that I recognized a (academic) community I wanted to belong to. In that specific community, the phenomena I was experiencing ought to be described in terms of psychosis/schizophrenia. That is a normative notion, not one of fact. Whereas at first, I thought this must have been telepathy. The āmustā here is also indicative of a (conflicting) normative notion, not a factual one. To conceive of delusion as a matter of normativity has greatly helped me in seeing things differently. For such norms are tied to a community. And I had independent strong motivations to belong to this community that has its own rules of describing these phenomena. I wanted in, so I followed these rules of description obsessively. It changed the experience of psychosis altogether, and gave me a sense that I no longer stood alone in this, hopes for a future and the like.
Now it is true that such happened before I got into contact with psychiatry. But the idea of fitting in a community and following their rules, of description in this case, was greatly beneficial for me. It satisfied my need to feel in touch with a community, but also satisfied a desire for peace of mind, for to see things as psychosis was much less distressing to me, for example, I now experienced mere hallucinations rather than threatening subjects talking to me. So to me there were many benefits to walking in line. It is true that norms can oppress, but they can also enable a life that is very satisfying.
I think all human relationships have a default setting , and that is they all can turn codependant , its just the way were built: confidence vs submission vs egotisim.
Dont get hung up on psychiatryā¦
if I didnt talk up for myself , I cant think of a single friend or family member that wouldnt ābullyā me, which is what you would probably call it. lifes a bitch mateā¦
I mean controlling patients re behaviours that do/might upset the general public(even if they might not be dangerous but just alternative ways of being). Although I can see your point to some extent I do feel that things that affect the individual rather than the general public are seen in a lesser light certainly in terms of concern and intervention .
If you are a patient with difficulties that affect functioning but not a danger to yourself or others(nuisance to others) you are more often than not left to your own devices.
The fact your QOL may be quite poor and your life restricted by your difficulties is given scant regard.
I sense this is true for people who go from presenting with acute, positive symptoms to a more chronic course of illness where acute positive symptoms have tailed off.
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