People's experience with psychiatry?

Post Reply New Topic

My experience with psychiatry. Mine in terms of pdocs, and other mental health workers, who work with patients hasn't been that good. Too many over the years who have judged without making the effort to listen and get to know me.
If they had bothered to ask and listen they might well have done a better job of helping me. Many have had a high arrogance to ignorance ratio.

What has your experience been like? Perhaps you've been luckier than me.

Up until a few years ago I thought I'd got all the help they could offer , which was usually shrink asks you what your symptoms are , shrink gives you drugs , drugs don't work , shrink ups your dose , drugs don't work , shrink gives you different drugs , drugs don't work , repeat ad infinitum

I've even had a shrink fall asleep after asking me a question , I still to this day don't know if this was some sort of test

I'd pretty much lost faith with shrinks and resided with the fact I'm just f****d up and cant be fixed. In the last two years it has become apparent that they never addressed my problems and just treated my symptoms with drugs , they never told me what was wrong with me but I don't think I actually asked either , the only thing they ever confirmed was that I was not schizophrenic.

My current shrink is a first class head of a dick although he agreed to a referal for an ASD assessment ( although I'm not sure they can refuse ) , he has to look up things in a book before he prescribes drugs.

I am generaly a paranoid person but am convinced their are things in my medical records that have been overlooked by consecutive shrinks. I suppose the proof will be in my ASD assessment, or not.

I'm in the process of switching psychiatrists. The one I had, my first, was not a nice experience. Everything was cool at first but our first session, before prescribing anything she asked me if I had any allergies. I told her dairy and shellfish. She prescribed the same medications my sister is taking because she said sometimes what works for one immediate family member will work for another.

Well, out of the three, two of the medications had dairy in them. So I broke out in hives all over my body and had a slew of other allergic reactions. Naturally, I had to stop taking them. I wasn't mad cause I figured maybe she didn't know. Then she prescribed some other stuff that also had dairy in it, and basically told me she didn't care and I was wrong because I got my information from the internet. (This is all in my second session with her). I asked her to sign paperwork for my job extending my short-term disability leave for a couple of weeks. She said no because I was too young to be disabled (even temporarily, I guess - so by her logic it was impossible for me to experience anything that would stop me from working, including extreme physical trauma). I was pretty okay when I walked in her office but at this point I was crying. She basically told me to suck it up, and that I would never feel any better if I just played video games all day. And then she told me to get out of her office because her next appointment was waiting for her.

I spent the next few hours crying, followed by a 24 hour period of complete depersonalization. If I didn't need therapy before I walked into her office, I definitely needed it when I left.

That was nearly two months ago, and it's taken this long to get an appointment with another psychiatrist because of my insurance.

I've also seen my primary care physician, her nurse practitioner, and a therapist. Overall, I feel like out of these people, I am the only one that takes my issues seriously. I wish I could just project my brain and feelings onto other people so they would know exactly what it's like inside my head. I would get help faster than the speed of light.

I've had terrible doctors, ok doctors, and wonderful doctors. Not just in psychiatry but everywhere. My last GP was so great, but when I graduated from school I had to find a new doctor and my current GP is a rotating team so I never see the same person twice and since they don't know me they write everything off as anxiety. Once things settle down I will find a new GP, because my current situation is not working for me.

Then again, my last psychiatrist was terrible and arrogant and chauvinistic and did a lot of things that made me worse overall, but my current psychiatrist is wonderful, respectful, caring, and even though she has very little time she never makes it seem like she's in a hurry or doesn't have time for me.

I was in the ER a few times for dislocated joints and a broken bone and they were very nice to me, but recently I was in the ER for extremely high blood pressure and they were dismissive and rude.

My general experience has been, if I don't connect or feel like a doctor is helping me, I find one who does. It sucks, and sometimes it takes a long time, but it's worth it.

I hate them. I hate them all, they should all be killed. Pill-pushing quacks, they should be forced to take their own goddammed pills and see how intolerable the side effects are! All they want to know is if you're still taking your drugs each appointment and that's it. Bastards!!

My experience over the years is that psychiatrists, and psychologists, are clueless, especially when it comes to dealing with people of our complexity. Quite a few autists, for instance, are also burdened with depression, anxiety, bipolar, PTSD, schizophrenia, BPD, etc that makes them near untreatable, certainly out of the realm of mere psychiatric mortals.

Mixed experience but on the overall pretty good. I'm going to toss in psychologists too.
There was the one time a Psychiatrist diagnosed the wrong version of bipolar and that created some problems but a Nurse Practitioner at another facility realized that and got it fixed.
Am currently using health care via a local university so I'm mostly seeing grad student Psychiatrists working under an attending and that's actually kind of fun. Have seen several different ones over the years as they move on but I feel like I'm making a contribution by giving them experience with someone with my mix of psych, neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, troubles.
In my experience the psychiatrist is pretty much just for meds.
And speaking of meds ...
There was the time in late 1980s where I was inpatient and just happened to get psychiatrist who had retired from Navy and had been Dad's psychiatrist during time leading up to Dad having to retire for medical reasons. that turned out to be a blessing when after taking Prozac for several days I said, Uh, no, I'm not taking one more of those; something feels really, really, really, wrong in my brain, scary wrong. Find something else, and that's not a request, that's an order. I guess it was from his experience with my Dad that he took my word for it at face value.

And speaking of Dad; after the above I had one psychologist he absolutely loathed because she was a "Jewish atheist liberal with those little round glasses" Several years later he commented that she had been the one who finally made a real difference. Hi Dad, welcome to reality! And I really appreciated her, she understood how to handle me when I was having a bad time. And once or twice looked me in the eye and called me out on BS - and she was right.

I have more tales to tell on psychologists but that one is good for now.

Good and bad.
I've only ever seen psychiatrists specifically for surgery clearance, as they are far too expensive for me to see for anything on a regular basis. I was just there to basically get ticked off that I wasn't nuts so I could proceed with gender reassignment surgeries. The first guy I saw was abysmal. He provided clearance for hormone replacement, then consistently stopped me from proceeding to surgery, charging me $400 with no rebates every time. Later I spoke to a transwoman who had been seeing him for two years and he was still refusing to clear her for surgery, keeping her at hormone replacement stage. Playing. With. Fire. This sort of thing can cost a transsexual their life.
I finally decided to get a second opinion in another city, after this psychiatrist told me I had a neurological condition because I could not recall the exact dates I started and left my last few jobs (trainwrecks that I basically never wanted to think about again, so hadn't bothered noting exact dates of start and finish).
The second psychiatrist was great - approachable, very disarming, very relaxed with a good dose of common sense, who understood transgender issues. He couldn't understand why the first doctor had had any issue with me whatsoever, but did say that he had seen several people coming to him after seeing this first guy because of problems with him.
He cleared me for two surgeries after only two consultations, both of which he provided subsidy for because I was technically homeless. And he was absolutely correct in his judgement of me - allowing me to proceed with surgery has been the best thing that I could have done for my health.
So there are good and bad out there I think. If you're having trouble with one doctor, seeing someone else for a second opinion is not "fishing" for the diagnosis you want. It's making sure one doctor isn't potentially completely misreading you and screwing up your healthcare.

Mixed experience here, too.

First time I saw a psychiatrist was for dx of ADHD. For him I did an online test, had a SPECT scan and talked to him at length about how I was at school and then work. Dx done. I was prescribed ADHD meds. They really helped but I got obsessed with cleaning and so I was prescribed antidepressants and a mood stabiliser. They worked but my mind, it seems, was pretty fragile because I ended up in hospital. They wouldn't let me take ADHD meds (that's the public mental health system for you) so they gave me reboxetine (Edronax) to replace those and my antidepressant. I can't remember much about the psychs in there but they made me do the very long MMPI test and it showed I was "sensitive". I spent 3 weeks in there.

After discharge I saw a psychologist for about a month before she said she wanted to refer me to her friend, a psychologist who specialised in autism. At that time, my experience of autism was vaguely watching Rainman so I was very surprised. I was still working at this time so I could afford to see this new private psychologist. Long story short, I was dxed with HFA. This was kind of earth-shattering to me. I went to a psychiatrist to have the HFA confirmed and he was very nice. I wished I could continue to see him but he was moving too far away so I couldn't.

Well that's about half the story. Maybe I'll write more later.

Prior to my first hospitalisation I had a rather idealised,knights in shining armour, view of psychiatrists.
Then an incident after my first week of hospitalisation shattered my illusions.
I was told I was being sent to make doll's houses as therapy. I have no aptitude for such things and basically freaked out at the prospect. Was pulled from in front of a hospital bus.
Instead of bothering find out why I had reacted as I did and learn something useful the pdoc instead chose to tell me I was an awkward and troublesome teenager. An early chance to get to know me lost and to this day,4 decades later, never recovered.

Services-wise things have looked brighter ever since my ASD diagnosis. I'm now with an autism group managed by the NHS every month and have a psychologist who specialises on people with Aspergers, so it's ideal.
What a journey, though. The first time I went back to my local mental health unit as an adult, being evaluated by a psychiatrist (note, psychiatrist and not psychologist) I was a wreck, and to this day I remember the guy to have been so condescending. I'm aware I have my biases, but if anyone poisoned my opinions of the services it was him. He was far more concerned with extracting details of my poor financial situation than anything else, even while I was sitting in a chair crying, obviously getting increasingly upset. I said to him that I was unemployed with no earnings, and he actually shook his head and tutted. Wanted to punch him in the face for that, but after this experience I have since learnt that psychiatrists just throw prescriptions at you and let you deal with the fallout, they don't give a flying crap about your state of mind, so long as the system processes you and coughs you back out again with minimal fuss.

I saw a psych for 5 years after I fell into a psychotic depression & slashed my arm 9x & had to go to the doc. The meds helped hold me together but & I didn't feel truly better till I weaned myself off of them. I had a lot of misdiagnoses cuz they saw my symptoms & didn't understand what the root cause was. I didn't talk about everything either thou so that was probably some of it. I've had much better luck self-analyzing & doing research on meds while factoring my experience of meds from when I saw the psych. My GP handles my psych meds nowadays & that's working a lot better for me.

It's a mixed bag for me. I've had good professionals and not so good ones. What has been consistent, however, is that the waiting list for psychiatric help is very long and my country never seems to have enough facilities to help people, in patient or out patient.

Not to get too political, but some of my friends like to say that Scottish Labour were better with healthcare than the SNP, who are currently running the show. I don't doubt that Labour have done well in the past but I resent the idea that they are so great with health. Under a Labour government I waited over a year to receive some brief therapy. Children tend to be highly prioritised in instances of mental illness so I wonder what it must have been like for adults at the time. This happened yet again under Labour when I was 17 and my school had to intervene and provide me a school councillor. That's why it baffled me that Kezia Dugdale was against the SNP's plans to have more mental health support in the community. I get wanting to focus more on healthcare but wasn't Labour all about "care in the community"? Ugh....

Not that it's perfect under the SNP. I still had to wait a long ass time for an assessment (albeit, not as long) and I know others who have had a s**t experience with the Scottish NHS in this regard. Oh well, just blame the tories, haha!

Going back to the professionals, I can appreciate that it is difficult to find people that specialise in autism and mental illness but I was frustrated by a certain CPN I used to see. She alleged to be experienced with autism but I felt very patronised by her, especially because she seemed to dismiss my feelings and tell me not to be so silly. Plus she once decided to do a session in the park because there were no rooms at the clinic. I should have said no because that s**t is private. She was generally quite unprofessional tbh. My current therapist is leagues better.

Still, I had good experiences with councillors, psychiatric nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists in the past. My current psychiatric team have been very good to me and I hope it stays that way.