"Get help" they said. If only it was so simple.

[KristineMC]

I feel like there's this big misconception in society where people who have never lived through mental health issues massively overestimate how effective treatment is. So many people seem to think depression can just be talked away by opening up to a shrink. It seems so absurd. Prolifers or anyone in general's response to a struggling person is always "get help, talk to someone, etc etc". In their mind, the biggest barrier to people getting better is simply stigma/unwillingness to seek treatment (of course this is a big issue, but much of the general population seem to view is as the main/only issue when it is often not). If only they would seek help, it would all be solved, or so they think.

It seems like this assumption is only held when mental health is concerned. For physical ailments, people seem to understand that treatment doesn't always work and even if it does, it's sometimes not straightforward. Psychiatry is scarily underdeveloped and the brain is so underresearched that at this point I practically consider psychiatrists to be witch doctors. Thorw drugs at you and maybe one works. The only medical field with basically no definitive understanding of how any of their illnesses work biologically. Not to mention the coercive care side of things.

So yeah, I'm tired of being told to "get help" or "just talk to someone". Like, you really think I've never thought of that before? Believe me, I've tried. About 5 psychiatrists and 4 therapists. It's only made me worse. There is no hope, and I'm tired.

 

[SMxj9]

As someone living with depression since i was a child i agree 100%. Drugs only made me worse.

Sometimes they need to believe there's always a way, a cure, they can't deal with reality.

Sure you can always save someone from suicide, by basically turning them into vegetables who have no will to live or die.

 

[Lazuli]

"Get help" is one of the things better left unsaid because it's so corny.

 

[rainatthebusstop]

I'm pretty sure the "Get Help!"/"seek therapy" crowd is also, funnily enough, the crowd making the social stigma around treatment worse.

deadass got told that i would become "dependent on drugs" and "really fat and ugly" if I ever went on antidepressants by the same person who tried to forcibly admit me to therapy. It's like "do you want me to get treated or no"?

 

[Fadenself00_]

Thorw drugs at you and maybe one works

you forgot "and if they make you worse, you'll be gaslit and called crazy"

 

[KristineMC]

you forgot "and if they make you worse, you'll be gaslit and called crazy"

Oh and the "if it doesn't work, they'll insist it did and up the dosage anyway". And they wonder why people are "non-compliant"

 

[Fadenself00_]

Oh and the "if it doesn't work, they'll insist it did and up the dosage anyway". And they wonder why people are "non-compliant"

It's like an elementary school bully being given the right to categorize and drug adults and come up with terminology for their resulting behaviour

 

[KristineMC]

It's like an elementary school bully being given the right to categorize and drug adults and come up with terminology for their resulting behaviour

What I don't understand is why there is always this power imbalance in psychiatry. If I go to a GP because I broke my ankle, there's no power dynamic, and the doctor isn't superior to me because I have a broken ankle. Yet in psychiatry the way everything is charted, the way doctors speak to patients and speak to each other about patients always has an underlying assumption that the patient does know what is good for themselves, does not know anything about their own life, and is "stubborn" or "rigid in thinking" or "noncompliant" when they disagree with the psychiatrist's judgement formed in a 20-minute consultation.

I have had a psychiatrist straight up tell me "don't say anything unless I'm asking you a question", during the first ever visit, before I had even opened my mouth. I swear, psychiatry is arrogant in a way no other medical specialty is.

 

[Fadenself00_]

there's no power dynamic, and the doctor isn't superior to me because I have a broken ankle

Because both of you(r brains) have the same relation to that organ (minus physical effects you are able to experience, but those are easy to understand and communicate), whereas in Psychiatry, this "black box"-approach only works for them, not for you, because you are the black box in question, and you have a lot more access to what things are actually going on, than them.. (at least for as long as imaging techniques are nowhere near the required level of detail - which will be for a while)..

To deal with that and to avoid this type of power dynamic, there are a bunch of ethics publications and guidelines from the World Health Organization for example, taking this into account.. Unfortunately, there is no legal obligation for them to follow those standards, let alone them being actively monitored if they adhere to them