Julie wrote:I assume your GP sent you to psychiatrists AFTER trying to rule out physical causes for your problem... it's not the psychiatrists' place to look for those... they'd assume you have emotional problems if you've been referred to them.
Your attitude is so childish sounding however - no one forced you to take drugs and resenting one medical field's monetary success (I guess your husband's practice just didn't pay well?) is more so.
Julie,
I have to respectfully disagree.
It didn't happen in my case but many GPs (not all) do refer patients to psychiatrist when they can't diagnose a medical condition. Or they will prescribe med themselves and provide horrific follow up care.
It is the responsibility of all physicians and not just psychiatrists to make sure something isn't being missed. So yes, if the situation dictates, they do need to make sure a physical problem isn't response for the emotional issues being presented. And by the way, I vaguely recall reading the story of someone who was depressed and responded very poorly to antidepressants.
It was a psychiatrist who suggested that the person get a sleep study and it turned out he had sleep apnea. If the psychiatrist had thought his duties ended with emotional problems, the poor patient never would have been properly diagnosed.
Actually, many people are subtly coerced to take psych meds. I can't say I was but I do feel like I wasn't given the total picture. And when I finally made the decision to taper, while my psychiatrist did cooperate with my slow tapering plan, he kept subtly making it clear he expected me to fail. So yeah, I do consider that a form of coercion.
And essentially staying my condition was for life under the false pretenses of a chemical imbalance was also not good.
But just so folks know, I don't know blame him for not being diagnosed with sleep apnea as it wasn't on my radar and I had no idea it existed. It was a few years after I had gotten off of meds, that a family member asked me about the possibility.
Finally, I wish you wouldn't refer to anger at psychiatry as childish sounding. People have a right to be angry if they feel the years were wasted with ineffective medical treatment of the profession, particularly when there are now so many studies that show that these meds are mostly ineffective. They work for a small portion of people but for most people, they don't.
Regarding the medical field's monetary success, if I like the doctor and feel they help me, I don't care how much money they make. If they don't, I do. But I think they call that human nature, right?
don't want to give false hope here
