Just in case you had any doubts that there are a great deal of politics and money involved in healthcare, look no further than some the entries posted by psychologist Bruce Levin over at the Huffington Post. Furious Seasons has the …
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I have worked in mental health since 1981 and have been a licensed psychologist since 1990. In my practice- which is consulting in nursing homes- I find that what I bring of unique value to health care is not expertise in medications (there are others providing that), but an understanding of human behavior. If I were to become a prescriber, I would be just another prescriber and my service would not be of unique value. Psychologists seek to become prescribers at their peril (not to mention dramatically higher malpractice insurance).
I am a mental health advocate on Long Island in New York. I am a grandmother and have seen a great deal of heartache and insanity in my lifetime. I have been exposed to the mental health community since I was a young child. Mental health issues seemed to gallpop through our family.
Most distrubing to me is the games “some”( and I am not implying that this is true of ALL Doctors) Dr’s play with the “NEW” meds that come out as if they will not have a negative effect either way. Changing meds for no good reason is more ludicrist then the insanity that many people face.
My mother had been on PROLIXEN for over 10 years and then her “DR” decided that she was no longer a “schizophrenic”,but bipolar and thereby needed to change the meds to lithium. MThis is a woman who had worked for 10 years at the lighthouse for the blind in Manhatten, and was healthier then ever before in her entire life.
Then in 1984 a change in meds changed her life forever. She has NEVER been the same and is now in a nursing home. I questioned the doctors reasoning. How and why would she want to rock a very steady boat by changeing the meds, when time had proven that she was more stable then ever before for such an extended lentgh of time.
How tragic to see a woman who experienced life for the first time at the age of 37, to only live for 10 and a half years in that manner. It was like the awakening, and then it was shattered by the change of her medicine, and why? What did it profit this doctor except to play God and find out that she had created a living hell for this woman who had finally found a litle peace.
I am not against meds and see that there is a place for “some” medications,but cognitive therapy can NEVER be replace by any PILL. I have seen people prescribed cocktails of meds, who live a spaced out existance. There has to be a happy medium.
“Do No Harm” doesn’t seem to scream out to the Doctors of our day, as money is far more important in their lives then the lives of those they have in their hands.
It is a nice thought that one should not bash another in the field, but the importance needs to go back to the ones you are BOTH serving! Not on just being nice guys!!!
Most of my experiences in obtaining care for my bipolar 2 husband has been as much or more harmful than helpful. The whole drug thing is a shot in the dark and that has been admitted to by psychiatrists. Trying a patient on drug after drug has got to leave some irreversible marks and I think it has. Antidepressants created years of horror for myself living with a bipolar manic who was not diagnosed correctly by psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker or primary care physician. The whole industry is at fault; it’s about get ‘em in and get ‘em out. Don’t entirely blame insurance companies (even though they are at the bottom of my favorites list). It is the doctors themselves who administer the “care” – if it can really be dubbed “care” with any degree of honesty. I feel unable to handle this yet I fear for my well being at the thought of going to a psychologist or psychitrist. This I have learned through bitter experience with a spouse’s mental illness and ensuing treatment.
> arguably both have misled the public about the our true understanding of how psychiatric medications work…
And also about how much psychiatric medications work… and also about the side effects of psychiatric medications (e.g., sexual dysfunction with SSRI’s)… and also about the possible long term effects (sometimes irreversible) of psychiatric medications)…
My concern with psychologists prescribing psychiatric medications is that they will be ‘second rate psychiatrists’. Better to be a first rate psychologist than a second rate psychiatrist, I think. I have a similar concern with psychiatrists (who come from decidedly biological backgrounds) performing therapy being ‘second rate psychologists’. Better to be a first rate psychiatrist than a second rate psychologist, I think.
Maybe part of the problem comes from the notion that psychiatrists can get into either medication or therapy or both. Psychologists, on the other hand, do therapy. Psychiatrists don’t do psychometrics, however, so there is a distinctive feature for psychology… And I’d imagine that psychiatrists who are into therapy do more training than the bare minimum that is required for their psychiatry program (or they jolly well should)!
While I recognize the good intentions of the writers, they commit our modern mistake of approaching issues and problems from the Adversarial System point of view, as the “Legal” approach to most problems permeates society. We need a return to common sense to understand the complex issues of human suffering, and how medicine/psychiatry has evolved to try to help these sufferings. “Psychiatry” is not a monolithic giant, with one way of thinking, trying to engulf humanity. As I explain in my book, The Return of Common Sense, there are hundredths of different school of thoughts, which advocates from the extreme believes of, “For every twisted thought there is a twisted molecule”, to “psychosis is in the eye of the beholder, and a way for society to classify misfits”. There are thousands with believes between these extremes. If Experts cannot agree, how can the public and other healthcare practitioners make sense of such a complex problems? I propose a solution, the return of common sense. The book will explain in general terms what upright, ethical, scientist on no pharmaceutical payroll, have been endorsing since the 1950′s, Especially Robbins and Guze in the US, Martin Roth in England. With common sense you will be able to cut thru the hype, special interest groups, religious or political agenda’s, and find a common ground for all this diverse organizations working thru a system to help people who are suffering from these devastating problems of hallucinations, clinical depression, alcoholism/drugs, and not push their individual point of view, a specific approach like Legal, or religious or political believes, forgetting the suffering person. The scientific method has provided treatment for devastating diseases than in the past were blame on poverty, morality, sin and aliens. Some of the famous one’s; seizures, the Black Death plague, Tuberculosis, Pellagra, Scurvy, all taking hundredths of years before science was able to figure causes and treatments. Before the discoveries, people were ostracized, stigmatize and put to death because it was their “choices and behaviors” that cause this problems and the spreading to others. Common Sense will tell you that are no different today, in hundredth of years we will have the answers for Schizophrenia, Bipolar and drug dependency. In the mean time, as healthcare providers we try using the scientific method, religious leaders use their faith , social workers try reducing the social factors, and yes, pharmaceutical companies with their scientist can help develop medication to ameliorate suffering, even tough we do not know the causes. That at one point or another one of the representatives of these sectors have abused their privileges granted by us to help us, does not make the whole sector “the Evil Empire”. For more explanations and discourse on these themes please read my book or visit my Website, http://www.commonsense-mentalhealth.com. I address in simple, common sense terms why Psychiatry, its disorders and medications cause so much confusion. Thanks, CS Felix
(Felix R. Toro, M.D.)