I’ve spent a lot of my time over the years writing about the importance of understanding your illness, learning all you can about possible treatments (including hearing about other people’s experiences), and becoming your own best advocate in your recovery. After all, who really knows you and your needs better than yourself?
But before you can begin advocating for yourself, you really have to understand the problem as you see it, what kinds of things happened in your life to bring you to where you are today (whether or not they are directly related to the problem), and figuring out where to go from here. Then you need to understand your treatment options, and how to get the type of treatment you want.
It’s not always easy, and sometimes it can be especially challenging to advocate for yourself when you’re in the throes of mental illness.
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All great stuff but don’t limit their options to just psychiatrists and/or psychologists! LCSWs, LMFTS, and LCPCs are all fully qualified to provide these services (Minus the meds of course). Often times these professionals have more availability and affordability.
Not all self-advocacy is limited to working with your mental health professionals. Sometimes advocacy is lobbying to change policies or filing a human rights compliant.
Absolutely! This is also part of what Community Counselors are trained to do.
Ending treatment can be just as simple as it started, with your indication to your therapist or doctor that you think it’s time to call it quits, and that you’d like to schedule your last session with them. While sometimes a therapist or doctor will be the first to make the suggestion, you don’t have to wait for them to do so. Advocating for yourself means understanding when you’ve had your fill of treatment for the current concern.Thanks for your simple solution to ending treatment,how good would it be if it were as simple and as right as that.We have been telling them exactly that, for nearly ten years, all from a speed psychosis, drug experiment, that cleared up in a week, that followed with eight or more years of forced insanity, depression, lethargy, and insecurity in a pill and an injection every fourteen days, until we made a stand against ten mil of flupenthixol in a needle every fourteen days that was making the victim sleep their life away, and depressed and tired and alienated all the time,we were told we could have pills by one doctor and told no by another, so they turned up with the gorillas and a needle and that then led to incarceration and that then led to them electrocuting the victim to death, not in reality but literally,anyway that was our attempt at getting away, and how they treat the people that try to get away, and guess what it doesn’t matter who you write to, to try and stop it, the response anyone will get, is, the only person who can change or stop it is the abusing doctor who reckons he or she is helping, and who just simply wont say they’re not, and if you think about it imagine if they went around disagreeing with their mates or let their victims get well off their poison, get the picture, either way that might happen for private people not already prisoners of mental health but once your a prisoner, its a lot harder than just saying you’ve had enough and your life is coming together or whatever, no, sorry, your a prisoner for life, so if you can tell me how to get away from them when the story is exactly how i have told you you might have an escape route, but i doubt it, either way thanks for some hope for some,and like you say its meant to be temporary like the troubled mind of the young, if they followed that wed be right too, but you know and i know its forever, that’s how they work it, we cant cure you, but we can manage your illness that only we can see for the rest of your life,and we will, full stop. Thats how it is in the real world of psychiatry and the real world of the victim.
Pretty good post, Doc, as I see it. One quibble:
“someone grappling with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder may be looking at a lifetime of taking certain medications.”
But maybe not. Depending on how much insight the treatment specialist has into the causes of these disorders in the lives of the sufferers.
Hello Dr. John Grohol, I really like this website. I ain’t gunna lie, I had to look up the words Participatory Medicine, after reading what it means, I’m totally aboard. I just got back from seeing my Psychiatrist and after 25 year of therapy, I’m close to a major breakthrough. Just a little Bi Polar humor. I’m 48 years old and I had Thyroid Cancer in 2005. I started with general anxiety at 23 years old but after Thyroid Cancer at 43, I’m now considered Bi Polar. A little history, my mother was Bi Polar, ECT in the 70′s and never recovered. My grandmother was “weak in the mind” as the Cajun people would say. I would like to see articles about the correlation between hypothyroidism, mental illness, and genetics. Did we all have hormonal imbalances, did we all have mental illness, or is it all the same? Desiree Cart Dugas
As an advocate for OCD awareness, I find this post interesting. If someone is in the throes of severe OCD, a trusted friend or relative to help them advocate is a huge plus.
And what you say about “doing your homework” and not staying with a treatment provider if no progress is being made is absolutely true. In the case of OCD, which many health care providers still do not know how to properly treat, it is imperative that the sufferer deal with a therapist who specializes in treating OCD and uses Exposure Reponse Prevention Therapy.