Or, perhaps, it's even deeper than that. I have noticed among doctors, especially among psychiatrists, a belief in their own infallibility. They can't ever admit to being wrong. They will pursue obviously unsuccessful treatments, beyond the point where they would even be effective under normal circumstances.
Although our experiences with psychiatrists haven't been as horrific as yours, we've certainly seen this attitude. We had one guy who essentially told us we and our entire family were batshit insane after a single half-hour session, another one who told us we'd probably have to be on medication for the rest of our lives. I think part of it, also, is because they quite literally have a huge investment in believing medication is a cure-all-- if you look at their offices, they've got different brand names all over their pens and notepads. They're being paid by the drug manufacturers to prescribe their stuff. (Most of the studies asserting the cure-all properties of various psychiatric medications are funded by pharmaceutical companies, also.)
You do not prescribe excess amounts of medicines for their side effects.
*points* That, in a nutshell, is a lot of what's wrong with modern psychiatry. There are increasing numbers of doctors who prescribe antipsychotics solely for their anti-anxiety side effects. There are even some who prescribe them in preference to anti-anxieties like Xanax because of the supposed 'highly addictive properties' of the anti-anxieties. (Yes, they can become habit-forming; yes, we once had to go through withdrawal from one when we overused it-- see below-- and it wasn't fun, but I'd still far rather take that than the potentially much more dangerous side effects of antipsychotics. And, of course, some of them are prescribed to deal with the side effects of other medications, or for problems that wouldn't be there if not for other medications the patient was taking.)
About previous studies on SSRIs and mania: we've actually heard about links between antidepressants and mania/suicidal behavior since the mid-90s, when we first started taking Prozac (at the lowest or near-lowest dose). But we had done a little research on our own and so we ended up actually watching ourselves for signs of suicidal impulses. I wish I could remember when we first heard about it. Apparently, though, there was no great publicity for any of these studies, or even for the cautions of psychiatrists who suspected a connection, until very recently.
As far as taking medications for the side effects, we did that once voluntarily and shouldn't have done it. During 2003 and the first half of 2004, we were taking Klonopin, an anti-anxiety drug in the same group as Ativan and Xanax, which had been prescribed to us because we were experiencing anxiety about our father being severely ill. (The son of a bitch tried to give us Thorazine for anxiety, but we managed to talk him out of it.) One of the things we found was that it helped us get to sleep, and so we started taking it as a sleep aid when we had insomnia. The problem was that we got habituated to it, to the point where we got some unhappy withdrawal effects when we finally went off it. Also, we were starting to lose our memory. Not just forgetting names and dates, but like, not being able to remember anything we did yesterday or for the entirety of the week before-- it was almost like 'classic MPD' in that sense. We'd have to check our IM logs with Astraea to remind ourselves of what had happened and if there was anything important we'd forgotten about. After we went off it, our memory gradually came back, so I think there was more than just stress going on there.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2005-01-02 02:54 pm (UTC)Although our experiences with psychiatrists haven't been as horrific as yours, we've certainly seen this attitude. We had one guy who essentially told us we and our entire family were batshit insane after a single half-hour session, another one who told us we'd probably have to be on medication for the rest of our lives. I think part of it, also, is because they quite literally have a huge investment in believing medication is a cure-all-- if you look at their offices, they've got different brand names all over their pens and notepads. They're being paid by the drug manufacturers to prescribe their stuff. (Most of the studies asserting the cure-all properties of various psychiatric medications are funded by pharmaceutical companies, also.)
You do not prescribe excess amounts of medicines for their side effects.
*points* That, in a nutshell, is a lot of what's wrong with modern psychiatry. There are increasing numbers of doctors who prescribe antipsychotics solely for their anti-anxiety side effects. There are even some who prescribe them in preference to anti-anxieties like Xanax because of the supposed 'highly addictive properties' of the anti-anxieties. (Yes, they can become habit-forming; yes, we once had to go through withdrawal from one when we overused it-- see below-- and it wasn't fun, but I'd still far rather take that than the potentially much more dangerous side effects of antipsychotics. And, of course, some of them are prescribed to deal with the side effects of other medications, or for problems that wouldn't be there if not for other medications the patient was taking.)
About previous studies on SSRIs and mania: we've actually heard about links between antidepressants and mania/suicidal behavior since the mid-90s, when we first started taking Prozac (at the lowest or near-lowest dose). But we had done a little research on our own and so we ended up actually watching ourselves for signs of suicidal impulses. I wish I could remember when we first heard about it. Apparently, though, there was no great publicity for any of these studies, or even for the cautions of psychiatrists who suspected a connection, until very recently.
As far as taking medications for the side effects, we did that once voluntarily and shouldn't have done it. During 2003 and the first half of 2004, we were taking Klonopin, an anti-anxiety drug in the same group as Ativan and Xanax, which had been prescribed to us because we were experiencing anxiety about our father being severely ill. (The son of a bitch tried to give us Thorazine for anxiety, but we managed to talk him out of it.) One of the things we found was that it helped us get to sleep, and so we started taking it as a sleep aid when we had insomnia. The problem was that we got habituated to it, to the point where we got some unhappy withdrawal effects when we finally went off it. Also, we were starting to lose our memory. Not just forgetting names and dates, but like, not being able to remember anything we did yesterday or for the entirety of the week before-- it was almost like 'classic MPD' in that sense. We'd have to check our IM logs with Astraea to remind ourselves of what had happened and if there was anything important we'd forgotten about. After we went off it, our memory gradually came back, so I think there was more than just stress going on there.