Psychiatry is based on inexact science - its a form of modern Alchemy.
Is my psychiatrist sure of my bipolar diagnosis? - No
Does she know which meds would help me the most? - No
Is she sure of which symptom I am experiencing? - No
Like all psychiatrists, they do a lot of guessing - very little is certain when it comes to psychiatry.
They dont even know how many of these meds work - they just prescribe them.
There is more predictability within other fields of medicine - Most things are up in the air with psychiatry.
I am currently in search of that perfect AP - but I wont find it, because it does not exist.
She has been guessing from the start with me - its so â– â– â– â– â– â– â– frustrating.
I have been helping her a long and have been doing some guess work of my own when it comes to these medications- maybe one of us will get lucky and hit the bulls eye
I agree. However they are the most experienced people we have. They see it day in and out. I would rather psychiatrists were there than not. Hope you find a medication that agrees with you more soon Wave.
I am naturally paranoid, “dah…” so I don’t say much to the doctor, but he just wants to be sure that I have a grip on things, so he generally treats me as a normal person with some issues, naturally because we are humans that are not working as normal brained humans do to different degrees. The doctors know the basics of human behavior but if we do not discuss our personal beliefs with them they will assume that we have a handle on our self’s and our beliefs as the unique beings that we humans are based on our own “unique experiences” that makes us who we are. They say we are what we do, and that we are known by our works. Of course we would have problems because we isolate and withdrawal from most normal activities so we are naturally going to suffer from the lack of proper interaction with others. It’s like I asked the doctor what would solitary confinement have on a normal person knowing that it is punishment to a prisoner but we do it out of need because I think we are unsure of who and what we are so have week self identities so this makes us withdrawal so that we will encounter less conflicts of interest that challenge our identities’. Does this sound true to you guys?
Psychiatry is in about the same stage of development of medicine in general around the turn of the century. It is an inexact science. They’re saying the next century is going to be “the century of the brain”, where they will get all the enormously complex circuitry of the brain mapped out. That raises a host of ethical questions.
I am kind of withdrawn with my pdoc, but lately I have been more assertive with her - instead of just letting her know of my symptoms, I will give her specific examples of my behavior to her.
Her knowing the details has helped a lot better for me now
Because of certain health issues, I am not a good candidate to go back on a mood stabilizer - the major mood stabilizers are pretty hard on the liver and as for lithium it has messed with my thyroid levels big time and gave me Hypothyroidism and messed around with my kidney function.
My pdoc is more comfortable prescribing me an antipsychotic as my mood stabilizer - as it helps with my psychosis as well
I think that alone would make things worse if anything, i don’t know but if your stopping med’s reduce slowly.
WARNING: Stopping med’s maybe a bad idea for yourself, just covering myself.
I’ve been trying to convince who i live with to let me just quit them, not getting anywhere. I believe there’s some truth in what i see while in an episode.
Depression can sometimes lead to psychosis - Psychotic depression needs an antipsychotic on board usually.
Antidepressants dont help with psychosis - sometimes they cause mania and psychosis themselves.
This is true. i have to bring it back to logic - the phenomena are real, it causes distress & loss of function, there is rationally a physiology to it all. The main diagnostic categories do fit certain ranges of symptomatology.
i like psychiatry & always have done, & some of my favourite people are psychiatrists. i am however highly critical of the current system. i feel that there should be far more comprehensive & humane understandings & approaches used, & that the primary focus should be on genuine healing. Of course there is debate about what all that would entail & efficacy.
In my own case i do accept the diagnosis & concede that the medication works - & the hard facts are that in a lot of cases, that does bear out. i think things could be very different with a transformed system, but that needs as much a social shift as it does one in psychiatry.
I certainly agree with you there. I got a new doctor last week and my diagnosis went from chronic paranoid schizophrenia to schizophrenic, NOS, chronic. Those are both DSM IV diagnosis I believe, they don’t even follow their own manual. Maybe I was 50% cured in one day.
back when, when they didn’t have tests for physical diseases like they do now, doctors used their hunches, their feeling that this or that was what it was.
I feel those were the best doctors. I don’t like the test tube way.
the same for pdocs. the one’s that use their hunches and feelings are the best ones, I think.