A reason to be sceptical of psychiatry and psychiatrists

A place to talk about your experience of living with Dyspraxia

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firemonkey
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A reason to be sceptical of psychiatry and psychiatrists

Post by firemonkey »

Just been looking through my psych correspondence. There's a copy of a letter from my then care co coordinator to my pdoc where she mentions to him I've spoken several times about my balance and difficulty with practical tasks . She then goes on to say I know that dyspraxia is quite hard to diagnose(something I never said). That was back in March 2008. Well I got an additional appointment on the back of that where the pdoc asked a couple of irrelevant questions and then rather huffily dismissed the subject. The subject has never been raised again by a professional although I occasionally drop the words dyspraxic and dyspraxia into the conversation. It seems to me completely irresponsible and bad clinical practice that a pdoc would dismiss something as a possibility after a few questions that really had no bearing on the matter at hand. Even if they had been relevant I doubt a 5 minute conversation would have been enough to arrive at a definitive yes or no as to the possibility of dyspraxia. It's crap like that that helps people to be sceptical about psychiatry and the intelligence of psychiatrists.

Psychiatrists tend to be dismissive if you have the intelligence and insight to have noticed things they haven't picked up on. Then there's the fact that if you have a psych diagnosis everything is seen through the lens of that diagnosis. The trouble is psychiatry in its ignorance fails to take a holistic approach. Couple that with the fact that a psychiatrist may not be the sharpest tool in the box and you have a recipe for bad treatment.
allesandro
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Re: A reason to be sceptical of psychiatry and psychiatrists

Post by allesandro »

Your forgetting one thing: if a clinician, or psychiatrist does not know much about a disorder, chances are he will be dismissive. It's too great a blow to the ego to say that they aren't well skilled in the diagnosis of something that they should be. The other thing is that if it's a lot of trouble to diagnose something and requires honing up on your skills to do it properly, then you're likely to be dismissed as well. In the States, where you have to pay for everything out of pocket, they would just say "well you would need to see a neuropsychologist for a battery of testing;" then they would send you to the neurology department of a major medical center where you would have an intake, see a neuropsychologist, and then a neuropsychiatrist( likely people they know and went to school with so they get credit for the referral and get reciprocation). fifteen hundred dollars later you might come out with a diagnosis. And if you need to see the neuropsychologist on an ongoing basis then two hundred and fifty dollars a week might cover that. If you need to see the neuropsychiatrist as well for medication, then add another three hundred fifty dollars a week to that. I don't know how to convert that to pounds. I'm still working on what a 'bob' is ,LOL. If you are a child that is different, you would be able to battle a reluctant school district to provide the testing free of charge thank to President Carter, who was a Democrat(like your Labor Party). Much of the treatment would also be covered, with the exception of the neuropsychiatrist (physician who is board certified in both neurology and psychiatry). A neuropsychologist would be similar to what you would call an educational counselor I believe. That's the glory of psychiatry in the States.
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