I’m about to follow with a sarcastic joke that I don’t find funny.
Robot psychiatry, yes, talk to your Alexa or Siri (the left’s idea of progress) without an additional bill. You can rename your Alexa to Doctor in keeping with the spirit of your future, but I will have to bill you for this introductory advice.
In truth, I am angry with such progress.
With respect to the OP, how about this: psychiatrist/psychologist/neurologist etc., heal thyself.
There are many celebrity, and no doubt non-celebrity, mental health specialists who themselves have, often severe, mental health problems. I’m thinking here of the likes of Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks could not recognise faces, for example, and at parties, even his own family had to wear nametags for identification. Oliver Sacks was unable to cure himself.
A few years ago, I attended an out-patient clinic. I was seeing a medical doctor, not a mental health specialist. When I entered the room, the consultant was sitting at his desk staring at the screen of a computer whilst occasionally typing. I was invited to sit down by the nurse, not by the consultant, who still did not look at me. When the consultation began, he observed no social courtesies such as introducing himself. Instead, glancing at me briefly, he launched into the consultation and started asking me questions. Since he was reading these questions off a screen and then typing in the answers, he did not look at me. This consultant was displaying typical signs of autism.
Autism is another condition which mental health specialists are unable to cure. For example, psychologists have claimed that around 95% of the population is autistic. I believe that the percentage has increased since I last heard.
As far as I am aware, there is no mental illness, or at least very few mental illnesses, that the medical profession can cure. They may be able to alleviate symptoms, but that is a far cry from a cure. ( In fact, alleviating the symptoms without understanding their cause is likely to make the patient worse, not better.)
Therefore, as to the future of mental health treatment, since physicians are unable to heal themselves, there IS no future.
I kinda miss turtle. She was kinda refreshing tediously about what her counselor said about this and that.
My psychiatrist types at a computer while asking me questions.
Since psychiatry treats the mind like a machine, then that hardly surprises me. But it is appalling practice, not to look at a patient. One cannot communicate effectively if one cannot see the other person’s face.
On the radio this morning (BBC R4), I heard an interview with a psychologist. This clinical psychologist was notable for introducing CBT with patients who are psychotic. It really beggars belief, but the psychologist, a 64 year old man, said that it is only recently that clinical psychologists have started asking patients questions about their lives. So, when he started asking psychotics about their past, he found out that they typically had undergone experiences that were exceptionally stressful e.g. sexual abuse. (Extreme stress can bring on psychosis.)
However, the point I really want to make is that psychiatry treats the mind like a machine and diagnoses drugs, whereas psychologists treat the person. This state of affairs can only exist, of course, because science does not understand the human mind. In fact, science does not know what a human being is, let alone a mind. Neither, of course, does philosophy. Under those circumstances, how can mental illness treatments be said to have a future?
Good point. But the machine and the mind are progressively assimilating, and hence at a critical point , and I think that is being reached., the differences will be of not much consequance
My psychiatrist, to his credit, did look up from his keyboard occasionally to see me back when we had face to face meetings. He once remarked that from his cubicle he saw me walking across the parking lot to get to our conference. That’s probably as personal as he is allowed to be.
Perhaps he has to have heads up from AI…
Just say’n
I still think there is a real human being beneath his robotic stance.
Mine too, until I mentioned it. Now she stares at me. I wish she’d look at the computer again.
The question-- can one be both personal and objective at the same time?
The answer is. a most definitely affirmed Yes, but t the cost. well. the cost depletes all that one possesses and some.it costs all fofefathers’treasude troves plus it indents all of future progeny. It enslaves clans, and it looks forward to a death which never, ever knowingly happens.
It condemns to solitude, it perfumes the sweet tears of babes, then it drives away the great doubt, and seeks the look of angels through crystals of unimaginable technique. It remains a child whom can pray to, so that all sins be forgiven
The list is endless and covets all languages but together reduces to his earliest whimpers and the big dig lays by his side to protect, and snarls waY the boogie man, who thorns around to leave once he really sees what the hell is going on.
The slumber is awkened, and the word began again
Then the room, the enormous room is somehow transfixed and the vast blueness and the evergreen of red dotted berries through an orange goldenwhite wash carries the strain of lyric scents of earliest memory.
Not easily done, not a sleight of hand trick, but for me, I can affirm it, and only using the cut off method, of partially differentiating various series of ideoscenes, with or without definite characters, can it be conjured up.
The cut off method is kind of like compartmentilization where some ideogram or signal remains, without anything but the most minimal of associative links to other compartments.
The closest to this is the Beckett idea in ‘How it is’
One can be objective in ones analysis (if by objective you mean scientific, rather than absolutely accurate and comprehensive) and personal in how one relays the message.
Observing my fellow man in the past year, in his bizarre behaviors, I have come closer to the theory that mental illness is a symptom of things that are wrong with society.
Systemic cruelty leads the members of that system to become what is called mentally ill.
This, I figure, is why the kindest and most compassionate humans are usually the first to slip into psychosis.
The consultant you describe would be trapped in such a cruel system and pass on this cruelty onto those that come to him for help.
You can tell a therapist:
“We live in a negative zero sum existence, meaning, that for every success and because of that success you are ruining at least one other life if not billions of lives”
“To understand that while you’re having the best time of your life is intentionally shattering other peoples hearts to give your meager soul a sense of power is sadism, sadism is psychopathy defined; you are a psychopath and I’m not: and you’re trying to fix me, it’s absurd”
You know what happens after this? They agree with you, but they don’t change. Suddenly, my therapist is my client, and I hate power differentials. I didn’t come here to fix you, I just need loving kindness in my life.
“Suddenly, my therapist is my client, and I hate power differentials.”
omg I know man. When you’re like way smarter than your therapist. awkward! Bro I had at least two shrinks quit on my old man when he had me in therapy in middle school. They were like ‘mr. prom’s dad, i can’t help this kid, I’m sorry.’
I think that psychiatry and psychology needs people to be present to help them most. My time in the day clinic was boring to begin with, but I felt that it was a good idea to be there. After a while I felt I could leave, although I returned later for a short time, which also helped. It may be because my symptoms were somatic rather than emotional.
I think that there is a big difference in how people experience treatment according to the country you’re in. What I hear from the USA makes me glad that I was in Europe when I became ill. I found that people were very considerate here, and they offered a number of helpful methods to combat my problems. It was up to me to decide what was better. Sometimes, probably because COVID hasn’t helped my condition, I wish I could return to the clinic, but presently it is either full time or not. I’m not too keen on a full-time psychiatric ward. The day ward is a different thing.
It is the third year of the pandemic, and still my mental health providers don’t know whether to wear masks or not. The counselors wear them; the psychiatrist–not necessarily.
I’m wondering how much the pandemic has exacerbated overall mental illness. It seems the country has gone mad with conflict between pro vaxers and anti vaxers. The future of therapy may hinge on who believes what–whether a vaccination is an imposition on one’s personal rights or a necessary attempt to cure this plague. I’m reminded of Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of the Plague Year”, which tells of carts loaded with bodies being pulled out of the cities during the black plague. Covid and its mutations seem to be everywhere nowadays. It’s enough to cause normal depression, if there is such.
I have the feeling that mental illness overall will have been exacerbated, with depression and paranoia worsening. My wife and I have noticed that we are more reserved than before and avoid people rather than approach them. I have several friends who have developed depressive symptoms, and one person who has suffered depression in the past felt overwhelmed by everyday occurrences.
In the northern hemisphere we have also had the winter months when it is dark and sometimes murky, unpleasant to go out in. In that kind of atmosphere, you could have a feeling like in the bad old days. But we have noticed that the days are becoming lighter earlier, which is an upside, and despite freezing temperatures the sun has been shining now and then, which makes an immediate difference.
I have taken up several penfriends, two of them in Australia, where the opposite weather conditions are, although they have had a lot of rain. It helps to hear them talk about working in their gardens and see their pictures. All in all, it makes difference, and we are mutually eager to get the eMails from each other. That way we give each other a bit of a boost each week.
If you want to receive my eMails PM me and send me your address. We’ve been in contact for some time now and perhaps it would be interesting for you to get the European perspective. I would like to hear your perspective and on Forums you always get people interrupting … 