Couple of days ago I was confronted by the same question if I thought about psychiatry as a profession before. A lot of memories crossed my mind about my rotation last year in psychiatry wards being the guy in love with the mechanism of our psych to shape and qualify us to be included in such complex societies.
it didn't went as the bright vision I had about it and finished with a harsh times after each day thinking in the parking lot about that especially at that time when a schizophrenic guy that came to the doctor orienting us to the place to start shouting with the taboos -of the outside- .. the frightening part was the doctor's mask face with no expressions at all as if this man lost all value of everything he ever believed in at that specific time, a time in which all of your emotions are calculated as an imbalance of your neurotransmitters... yes you're no more than a broken machine !
psychiatry was that bell telling me that all of Freud's theories based on psychological analysis is lost in this new dawn of drugs making their users a "partially normal people" I say partially as the fear of losing it makes them at a worst condition than that free zone of illness which you can be what you want to.
what is our standards of a healthy mental status after all ?? being well enough to lie, cheat, hurt others and get away with it ? we need to think of it all over again.
I know for sure that I've changed the way I look to psychiatrists from that point as i had a booster shot of respect to them and to their patients that took their duty to them selves to be treated from illnesses our community still denies it's magnitude and common people attribute it to loss of faith, witchcraft and a lot of nonsense they find a shelter in it from facing the ugly fact that we who assumed that we live in a normal way have created an environment perfect to trigger some of those illnesses, specifically the ones that "and i quote a psychiatrist friend" never takes the patient out of the darkness -depression in particular- as a huge number of such people live with no satisfaction about them selves even when fully dosed with drugs. it's simply something more than being high.
faith in the surrounding community and looking at it as the supportive safety net is the first thing we need around here. please help them by simply telling them that we are here to help.
Amazing post.Well,Freud has affected psychiatry but I think it was more on psychology.Psychiatry(as you know of course)is more medicine,so, more drugs.The problem here, that we lack psychologist who work side by side with doctors.We're not informing people that mental disease aren't related to a lack of faith or witchcraft,it's as real as physical diseases.That's our problem,if physical diseases don't kill,I think we'd think it's something related to super power,devil...We should open door for more majors in hospitals beside medicine (psychology,neuroscience,...)also,informing the society about mental,psychological diseases.Not every body who has a psychological problem is either a crazy or faithless person.It's as real and as serious as cancer.
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll choose what will satisfy you,not what the job market/society asks (although I have a feeling you really don't care about society nor the job market ;) which is what we need)