I just read an article of someone who basicly said psychiatry offers people excuses for their bad choices, irresponsibility, negative feelings etc by labelling it as a disease. And then they become dependant on some psychiatrist or nurse so they neednt take responsibility.
I always feel spoken to with such stuff…it makes me feel a little guilty for being anxious, sad, psychotic, impulsive, etc. For not functioning fully. As if it would go away if i tried harder.
For some strange reason i never apply this to others though.
The big difference here for me is hallucinations. You can’t fake them, and they directly respond to medication. You can’t label it as anything else or reason it away because it is a concrete symptom.
Back when I was only Bipolar (no sz yet) I often felt guilty about being anxious or sad, but since getting voices I no longer feel that way.
Schizophrenia wasn’t a choice for me. Just some genetics and some environment for sure.
Don’t believe everything you read on the net. It’s easy to say psychiatry is a modern monster and you don’t really need to back that up with any facts.
It’s not constructive approaching schizophrenia in anything but a medical model for me. Pills work for most folk in some shape or form. Seems to me a negative approach regarding it like it’s something you can overcome because your upset or negative about what is a serious disorder.
Willpower is like 20% of schizophrenia. 80% of it is our brain physiology screwing up and negating the willpower factor.
A schizophrenic who has a family and full-time job has the pure willpower to become a millionaire if the schizophrenia were 100% controlled (and if he wanted to.)
Schizophrenia is like playing life on hard / impossible mode.
there is some truth in this for certain types of behavior. I have been tempted to consider certain things acceptable because of a diagnosis that I have a ‘tendency’ to do such and such or some med makes me prone to such and such.
I think whether or not someone wants to get better vs using a diagnosis for a crutch makes a difference.
Some people want to pop a pill and hope problems go away rather than deal with the root of the problem. I was asked if I wanted a prescription for something and I told the doc that I wanted to deal with the root of the problem and he said ‘I’m really glad you feel that way’. That was a good doc.
I think patients having unrealistic expectations of psychiatry is more of a problem than psychiatry itself. I’ve found psych doctors for the most part to be very caring people.
There are definitely some disorders such as Personality Disorders (and Borderline in particular) that can benefit waaay more from therapy than any med in the world…unless they want to be awake just long enough to take their next dose then zonk right back out. Are there genuine mental disorders? Of course. Are there folks who malinger? Of course. Also, it’s money for everyone if a patient sees a psychiatrist, and even more money for the psychiatrist if a medication is changed/added/removed, as it’s now billable as a “complex evaluation.” So docs see benefit from it too.
There is also the problem of overdiagnosing: witness caffeine abuse disorder and its criteria. My pdoc has flat out said “I think intermittent explosive disorder is a conjuration for folks who really just have a psychological problem of managing their normal human emotion of anger.”