This is my reply to a response to Psychiatry and its critics
Beckie,
I hope you give these point a thought:
1. If one has a condition which is life threatening to oneself or others, should one not be restrained?
2. Insulin shock, hydrotherapy, and now ECT. They are progress in therapy. Do surgical procedures remain the same after decades? Do you consider surgery to be one form of torture too? To a person who sees only the operative procedure, it would appear the person on the table is being tortured. But we accept the process because the surgeon is supposed to do it for the good of the patient. Why don't we do the same for the psychiatrist? He does no good?
3. ECT has limitations. So has any medical procedure. Within its limits, it can work wonders. The process itself has undergone modifications, as any medical process does.
4. Psychiatry is a medical discipline. Psychiatrists are trained to diagnose. And help. How the patient will respond, how much will a procedure help, has many variables to it. Two of those, which can be controlled, are physician's expertise and patient compliance. We physicians try and ensure the first, but let the patients/clients ensure the second.
5. A diagnosis is only a label, to come to judgment about therapy and convey sense to co-therapists. It also helps convey to the patient/client what can be done. It is not meant to pass judgment on the patient, to stigmatise, much less ostracise.
6. Diagnostic variations are seen in all branches of medicine, not only in psychiatry.
7. ECT should be a choice. So should surgery. But when one is so severely depressed that one is actively suicidal, when delusions can make one suicidal/homicidal/violently assaultive to others or self, should it still be a choice? Should emergency surgery be a choice?
8. I am sure there are methods and methods of help. Self help groups, relationships, all have the potential to help and even heal. Psychiatry would want to collaborate with all means to help the recovery of patients/clients. The whole Mental Health Movement is geared to first of all bringing about mental health, and also treating the sicknesses that befall some of us. Psychiatry is an integral part of the Mental Health Movement.
Warm regards.
Ajai
22 May 2006
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Beckie Child
On 5/20/06, Ajai Singh
Psychiatry and Its Critics
There is something about Psychiatry that attracts the most vehement protests. No other branch of medicine sees such vilification heaped on it.
hmm...would that have anything to do with the dynamics of power inherent in psychiatry? What other condition besides a psychiatric condition can you be incarcerated against your will if you choose not to have treatment?
When you look at so called treatments over the history of psychiatry--whether it's insulin shock therapy, hydrotherapy, electroschock therapy, etc. many people's experiences of those therapies were experienced as torture. Not to mention what medications can do to people.
I'm not saying that psychiatry hasn't helped some people, but for many of the people finding the help that works for them hasn't been easy--and some people never find help that works for them.
When psychiatrists tell people that just because they have a psychiatric condition (even if it is acute and or long-term), that they can never work, go to school, get married, have a family, or otherwise kill their dreams and hopes, and that they will be sick for the rest of their lives, do you have any idea how demoralizing that is--what kind of iatrogenic wounds that produces? Not to mention the anger that creates?
I've heard and seen a lot of talk about reducing stigma--yet most of the stigma and discrimination I've experienced has been at the hands of psychiatry and the mental health system, and I know that I am not alone in this experience.
We haven't even mentioned the diagnostic process. You can go to different psychiatrists with the same symptoms and come out with vastly different diagnoses. And then all of those diagnoses trail you for the rest of your life. Not to mention that if the help they are offering doesn't work for you, then you get labeled and diagnosed with a personality disorder--rather than saying we don't know how to help you. When people aren't reacting to the treatment in the way that is expected, many people get told they are failing the program--not that the program failed them, and then they get another label.
It's not that I'm opposed to ECT--I just think that ECT should be a choice. It is not my psychiatrist's or any other psychiatrist's place to tell me that the memory impairments are more desired than severe depression. That's a value judgment--and I resent it when other people make value judgments about my life and they aren't living my life.
I don't know where you've been listening--but I've heard many people who get well talk about what has helped them. Most of them have gone through an extensive amount of things that weren't helpful, delayed their recovery, etc. Some talk about how medication changed their life, a number of people who've gotten better talk about the relationships of helping providers that helped them to heal and get better.
beckie
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22 May 2006
Posted by psychiatrist400080
at 2:09 AM EDT
