I’m lifting this from a post another thread because it may be useful to understand in grasping the effects of medications vs. those of psychotherapy.
"And knowing that – plus getting increasingly sophisticated with respect to the mechanisms of epigenetic methylation and de-methylation – the pros are now headed toward both behavioral and medicinal interventions that will do exactly that in the precise neural tracks that foster and prevent addictive impulsivity [or delusions, or impulsivity, or mania, or, or, or].
"The medicinal interventions are faster, but they’re ‘cruder’ and cause a lot more 'collateral damage in the form of unwanted sfx.
“The behavioral interventions are slower, but they’re like (very) ‘smart bombs’ that tend to hit the intended target only.”
I had absolute, totalistic, black and white beliefs, too. Now I have less of them (moving as fast as I can towards none whatsoever). I refuse to be a victim, and it is clear to me that my being a victim was entirely due to beliefs.
Others are welcome to believe however they wish, of course.
I think psychotherapy is risky as well but in a different way from meds are.
A lot of ppl drop psychotherapy due to the pain of the treatment which remains them untreated.
Edna Foa’s still too widely employed exposure therapy or Davis & Bass’s Courage to Heal too often is. If that’s what one’s therapist is trained for and wants to use, I’d be very wary. And I understand it’s difficult to be an “educated consumer” when one is struggling just to “keep one’s nose above water.”
The skills training CBTs and the more modern mindfulness-based cognitive therapies like DBT, ACT, MBSR, MBBT, etc., are – if used appropriately – pretty safe for those in psychotic conditions because they do not strive to induce memory recollection nor do they make the pt feel like some sort of “stupid dolt.”
I think psychotherapy has the potential to be very risky if the therapist uses therapy to make misguided moral assumptions rather than to help someone with genuine and very real difficulties. This is what happened to me , not once but twice.
Instead of getting help and support I had therapists pulling the " If you want to be a good person" line.
On both occasions I pulled out of therapy very quickly when it was obvious they were more interested in character assassination than helping me to cope better.
“Therapists are only as good as their freedom from the screwy beliefs that got them whacked enough to want to be therapists,” a favorite prof told me. Another prof said, “One third of them know what they’re doing and can be expected be helpful. One third don’t but won’t do that much harm, other than empty your wallet. And one third should be run out of business.” A third prof told me, “One third? You mean 80 percent.” And I will admit that most of the therapists I know personally I would not refer anyone to.
Some background: At the time my name was mud with the psychiatrists etc mainly due to my pressing for more help which they were unwilling to give. I was labelled as “awkward,demanding and troublesome” . I was basically told that I had been referred to therapy because the psychiatrists were fed up with me.
So when I got to therapy it was with carrying a bad reputation.
Very real problems were dismissed/ignored and it is still very much the case today. I have no doubt that medication has a part to play with certain symptoms but there is much that needed a non drug/more holistic approach.
Psychiatric services are not interested in providing that. Instead they issued a mini lecture when I got a bit wayward with turning up for my depot on time.
Along with probably 50% of the psychotic pts on any clinical service at one point in time or another in my direct observation over the past 21 years.
Me, too. Anger management twice. (And it was useful.) The prescribers know chemistry. Period. They dx. They read what the computer says to do for the dx. They prescribe. Most do NOT get why the pts are frustrated and distrustful.
Amen, bro. I was mis-dx’d and diametrically mis-medicated from '94 to '02.
Because they come from a strictly chemical model.
Which is precisely why I keep harping about the CBTs and mindfulness on this forum. I’d still be verblungent if it wasn’t for the Hindu who yanked my gonads out of the fire in '03, and all the Buddhists and Sufis who “trained” the mindfulness-based cognitive pshrinques who have trained me since then.
[quote=“TomCat, post:11, topic:26815, full:true”] Also @firemonkey
What do you think about those that also have alogia as a symptom?
[/quote]
“Alogia is characterized by a lack of speech, often caused by a disruption in the thought process. Usually, an injury to the left hemisphere of the brain will cause alogia to appear in an individual. In conversation, alogic patients will reply very sparsely and their answers to questions will lack spontaneous content; sometimes, they will even fail to answer at all.[3] Their responses will be brief, generally only appearing as a response to a question or prompt.”
Do these symptoms fit your experience?
Do you have difficulty understanding what you hear, what you read, or both, or neither?
Q1 was a yes or no. Q2 is a yes or no across four domains. I can’t help if you can’t give me those yesses and nos. But I can probably do quite a bit if you do.