Posted by Tabitha on April 11, 2016, at 15:18:00
In reply to Re: Mad in America, posted by Christ_empowered on April 10, 2016, at 3:03:19
When I hear the anti-psychiatry argument that the concept of mental illness is just an attempt to medicalize deviance, I get a bit enraged. It's not like the mentally ill are just kooky noncomformists wearing eccentric clothes and talking to daisies. There's real suffering involved, and great loss of human potential of the sufferers. The anti-psychiatry folks never seem to address that at all.
I really appreciate your point that there's a stark class divide in the quality of mental health treatment. My experience is that if you're lower class or using a high volume provider (such as HMO doc), the goal is just to get you calmed down with medication with little care about the side effects and resulting quality of life.
I once had a counselor go to bat for me with a pdoc who had put me on a high dose of tricyclic AD well after SSRI's were available. The counselor told me tricyclics were what they used on people at the county hospital, the implication being that high-functioning people should be getting the newer meds with reduced side effects. Despite how unfair that is, I was fortunate to get that advice.
Things improved once I quit seeing HMO type pdocs and switched to full price private practice docs. Then they assume you're a person who needs to function at the best level you can, so they will keep tweaking your meds to correct for side effects.
poster:Tabitha
thread:1088004
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20160331/msgs/1088081.html