General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: ODD: “If you’re outraged, you must be mentally ill.” [View all]nolabear
(41,936 posts)At the analytic institute where I'm faculty, we get many a trainee who is stunned by the desolation of prescription pad psychiatry. For people who genuinely care about human relationships that kind of work is mind and soul numbing, but insurance companies recognize neither mind nor soul. We are under absolute assault by insurance companies who second guess our diagnoses, limit the number of sessions we can have, threaten to put practitioners who advocate extended treatment on a "list" with the vague threat that future requests for coverage will come under special scrutiny. We're constantly caught between our patients, who come to us in desperate and varied need for all manner of thing from genuine brain dysfunction to chronic grief to the inability to stop engaging in extremely harmful behaviors. We work like dogs, often for considerably reduced fees, in order to actually be of help.
I've told many a patient that I believe in meds when necessary, that I leave those decisions ultimately up to them out of respect, but that I am not in the business of drugging someone in order to help them stay in their shitty lives (in so many words...I tend to be blunt).
I could go on and on but that's just my frustration coming out. Thanks for listening.