8 ms·

Why I Quit Being a Therapist [video]

omosubi 8y ago
What are good countries/societies that have good mental health systems? What does that even look like? Is this a uniquely American problem?
- intralizee 8y ago
  Canada is better than United States from my experience of living in both countries. I sought help with gender dysphoria in the United States. Ended up being drugged with antipsychotics, while stuck in a hospital for two months against my will and when I just wanted to start HRT. Doctor wrote untrue statements on my medical records and I couldn't find anyway to sue since I was a poor university student at the time. Almost resulted in suicide. Insurance was billed approximately $55,000 Now I'm in Canada and I'm suicidal from the past events in life but I can see a psychiatrist once a week. She doesn't recommend drugs and mostly just wants to talk with trying to improve my outlook. I'm trying to get death with dignity in Switzerland and got a positive evaluation from her after several months. Everything in Canada is covered since I was born in Canada (citizenship). I'm in Montréal and from what I've seen most doctors don't push prescription drugs compared to what I saw in United States (Michigan). Canada also has a phone number (similar to 911) but is a direct line to speak to a nurse or social worker for help. People here actually can get help concerning their health right away and not fear having to pay anything. edit: I think the cost of the healthcare in the USA is why people that don't get help, end up mass shooting and mental health stigma is a result of people not being able to afford it; trying to rationalize it's for people really messed up (not them).
  - muglug 8y ago
    I think the cost of healthcare has something to do with it, but surely the culprit is the gun culture that's everywhere you look the moment you leave big coastal cities. The culture that says - "feel threatened? Reach for your gun!" Also, second what other people are saying - I'm so sorry you were hurt for so long. I hope that you stick around a while, continuing to advocate online for the trans community.
    - OpenBSD-reich 8y ago
      Oh please. Guns are no more the root of gun violence than BitTorrent is the root of digital piracy. Gun control is the cheap easy path to kudos and biscuits, where improving the mental health system is the long tiring hardwork nobody wants to do. Muslim examples in Europe have shown vehicles and knives to be just as effective. Last but not least, if you vote away my hobby/toy, don't whine like a little piggy when I rally others to vote away your hobby/toy. Government is force which should be used sparingly and responsibly.
      - pjc50 8y ago
        > Muslim examples As you've almost spotted, the problem is one of radicalisation rather than either gun ownership per se or mental health. Other countries have guns. Other countries have people with depression or PTSD. Mass shootings in other countries are generally correctly labelled as terrorism. But people are unwilling to realise that the American mass shooting problem is one of terrorism.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        cheez 8y ago
        Do you think the people driving trucks into people have no mental health issues?
        pjc50 8y ago
        Some of them, probably. But not necessarily all of them, and I don't think it's a necessary precondition. I've certainly not heard of very many suicide bombers or mass shooters that had diagnosed but unmanaged mental health conditions. Is someone having political beliefs that they're willing to die/kill for a sign of mental illness?
        cheez 8y ago
        > Is someone having political beliefs that they're willing to die/kill for a sign of mental illness? I think you're making an assumption that this is what is happening. What do unsuccessful, captured suicide bombers say?
  - nowarninglabel 8y ago
    Thanks for documenting your story, appreciated reading through one of your blog posts and would recommend others to take a look.
  - vSanjo 8y ago
    You don't know me, and I don't know you, but I hope the words of a real person from a different country behind a keyboard help you at least get through your day, week, month or year. Best of luck to you, friend. Whatever your endeavours, however you -truly- want things to be, I hope it goes the direction you plan.
  - cheez 8y ago
    Geez, sounds tough. You seem like a smart person, I think you'd be worth knowing.
- mjevans 8y ago
  At least in the US: * Health-care is a cost center. * Denying Health-care is a profit center. * The populace has been conned in to believing it's an "insurance" * vvv The population also mostly doesn't realize, at a logical level, that those without coverage still factor in to costs. * Increased suffering * Increased crime * Decreased GDP (both from less able workers and more broken windows) * Actual costs of care are passed along as inflated prices. I would really like, and as long as there weren't other blockers would vote, for candidates that supported at least /basic/ healthcare for all. Profits to be had in line cutting during non-triage critical moments.
- hiker512 8y ago
  Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finnland, Austria, Switzerland, France, Netherlands. Not sure about the other countries in Europe. But honestly, every time I hear anything about the American healthcare system, I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry.
intralizee 8y ago
Key points from the video: 1) People mostly benefit from having someone to talk to about their problems. Drugs apparently aren't much help. 2) People with the most trauma are the ones that have the least finances to pay for treatments. 3) Most trauma is from early life. 4) The therapist has no support from colleagues and cannot talk openly. When someone mentions suicide its recommended to send the person straight to the hospital and to be medicated (Video author does not agree). 5) The responsibility is too much, hearing the horrors and being on the minds of the harmed person.
- phnofive 8y ago
  Thanks for the summary, as it’s the only way I’d have heard this person’s view. 1) paints a broad and inaccurate view unless there is more specificity about what kind of medication is being discussed. 4) & 5) are well taken, though; where do professionals with confidentiality restrictions get help, each other?
  - intralizee 8y ago
    He didn't really discuss what kind of medication. My interpretation is he feels medication is pushed too much and rarely solves the problem. He mentioned how people wanted to taper off and eventually stop taking prescription medication. He didn't like how he isn't allowed to help with that area. Also he voiced how the cost difference for someone staying in the hospital as an impatient is very high compared to seeing him. Insurance will try to prevent patients from seeing him 3 days per week and only want once a week (even if 3 days is helpful). Insurance companies have every detail about a patient and demand it without respecting privacy.
    - withdavidli 8y ago
      Happy to see you clarified your take on point one. While summaries are helpful, it's playing the telephone game on interpretation. It's better to view the source material whenever possible.
  - bshimmin 8y ago
withdavidli 8y ago
It's a profession that's mentally and emotionally draining. My education background is in psychology, worked at a mental institution for a few months as a mental health assistant. Never met a psychologist that was actively encouraging students to go the therapist route, in fact the opposite. It's something to think long and hard about. One memorable encounter was an aunt of my friend literally grabbed me by the arm when she found out I was planning to be a psychologist and advised against it. Thought "who is this crazy lady", she was head psychologist of several institutions for the district...
- kopo 8y ago
  >> in fact the opposite What are you telling them to do? I have a psychiatrist friend who consults at the medical center, in a college town. She is getting called in so much she wants to move to a different town.
  - withdavidli 8y ago
    To know what they're getting into. It's mostly a thankless job. One of the OP's video talks about how most therapist just wants the easy clients and refer all their hard ones to the YouTuber. So it will vary greatly depending on who your clients are. Imagine the difference between being a therapist for silicon valley tech employees vs a mental hospital, prison, or juvenile detention center. If they do their own practice, it's much like any other business, picking the right clients goes a long way in making your job easier and how much money you can make. Psychiatrist are different than psychologist. The former goes to medical school and can prescribe drugs.
- chippy 8y ago
  > Thought "who is this crazy lady" Did you become a psychologist?
  - withdavidli 8y ago
    Nope. The mental health assistant job knocked it out of me. Nothing like being in an environment where you have to be on guard for your safety to really want an office job (friends had teeth knocked out, another head-butted ended with concussion and I believe migraines for rest of her life, I almost had a finger bitten off, and other coworkers got stabbed with utensils).
julienmarie 8y ago
Something interesting is making a mental "disorder" a sickness. A mental trait becomes a disorder when this trait no more compatible with social norms ( it breaks the order of things, hence disorder ). Hence the pain. And we assume a pain is a sickness that can be cured, medicated. Medication do not solve the root of the pain. Our brain is more than a chemical balance. It's a neural network, trained on the training set of our childhood. There is this fundamental age around 6-7 years old where the child creates its identity picture, its definition of self, which becomes the blueprint of its personality trait and evolution. This blueprint causes what psychoanalysts call "neurosis". When digging into it, there are so many things that makes sense in the field of psychoanalysis, and the parallels with neurosciences and even AI are staggering. Little nuggets I found enlightening in my day to day perception of life : - We learn language and the meaning of things from others ( our parents usually ). As a consequence, we naturally expect truth and meaning to come from outside. That's why we look for confirmation from others. That's why we expect the people we fall in love with to give our life meaning. - We create our identities based on our environment. We define ourselves against the others as to define is to draw a boundary, a difference. That's why you'll often see the cliché in family where if the elder's dominant trait/definition is to be good at school, then the second child will take the opposite route. - Our neurosis is mostly our limiting factor to approach life. This is what we fight against everyday, this is the wall between what we can be and what we are. I understand this can be seen as a controversial view for many. I'm no psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, but was raised in a psychiatrist / psychoanalyst family. A weird but enriching experience.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > As a consequence, we naturally expect truth and meaning to come from outside. That's why we look for confirmation from others. Yes, we look for confirmation, just like we give it, but that's not all, we also decide how to weigh opinions based on our opinion of the people holding that opinion. I mean, how can others give you confirmation, if they in turn get their truth and meaning from the outside? That'd just be pointers going in a loop. By the same token "the outside" can tell you anything, you can tell "it" anything.
  - 8y ago
analyst74 8y ago
The field of psychiatry is actually undergoing a lot of changes and improvements. With progress in understanding how our brain works at chemical level, and newer drugs to balance the chemicals when they are out of balance. Many of the previously untreatable mental problems are now treatable with medicine. That is unfortunately only available to psychiatrists, who has medical designation. source: a psychiatrist friend
- zaroth 8y ago
  At a macro level (population surveys of mental health) I think we can safely say your friend is biased, and that the field is basically stumbling around in the dark ages and generally unable to offer much help. Didn’t the latest DSM get basically outright rejected by the NIH?
- patcon 8y ago
  > With progress in understanding [...] and newer drugs to balance the chemicals [...] Many [...] mental problems are now treatable with medicine. The catch here is that those deciding what "progress" is, are the same therapists and health professionals of the sort speaking in the video. And as they said, they are under immense pressure of their own. The alternative to "medication" is social support, of which they themselves are often primary sources. They are overburdened themselves and often under-supported by gov, so they're under stress (therapists for well-off people excluded). tl;dr - they have a huge incentive (for preservation of their own sanity) to see "medication" as progress, because it relieves their own burden (which is structural to system). I'm not saying this is malevolent or judging anyone to be bad, but it's something to be wary of Disclaimer/source: sibling is community social worker
throwaway2018-2 8y ago
One of the things that really scares me about working with a therapist is that I have suicidal thoughts a lot. Like, I don't deserve to be alive or that I want to die. I'm still pretty productive, make a good salary, was recently promoted. I'm scared that if I were really open about these feelings, something bad would happen, that I could be hospitalized. Which feels like a real step backwards to me. A step towards not actually getting better.
- jakegarelick 8y ago
  If it makes you feel better, I seriously doubt a (certified) one will do that. The smart ones realize that hospitalization can really derail your life and make you an even higher suicide risk. Additionally, there is a big difference (in my opinion) between suicidal thoughts and actually acting on those thoughts. Just from reading your post it doesn’t sound like you have much to worry about.
- viraptor 8y ago
  You can find therapists who has remote sessions over internet. If you're worried about someone acting against your will, you can have a Skype session without revealing your real name. Even with someone in another country - if your primary language is English, you have lots of options. You can't get things prescribed this way. But it doesn't sound like that's an issue here.
- julienmarie 8y ago
  I agree with jakegarelick, a good therapist will not hospitalize you. What matters is for you to talk. Why would anybody not deserve to be alive? Life is fundamentally nonsensical, and our struggle / cross ( depending on how you see it ) is to put meaning into it. This is why life is at the same time a tragedy and a liberating experience. We are ephemeral, and not this important at the individual level. Only thing that matters is not harming others, eventually doing good to others if we are lucky, and finding joy in little things ( intellectual endeavours, earthly pleasures, art, sunsets, you name it ). If it can help, a reading that helped me when I was deep in depression in my 20's was the The Gay Science, by Nietzsche. Don't read it in one go. Keep it with you, and read a few aphorisms every day. Some three liners aphorisms from Nietzsche made more impact in my life than everything else I read combined. This book literally saved my life.
DubiousPusher 8y ago
I was hoping for something insightful but really got more of the same antiestablishment alt-med ranting you'll find elsewhere on the web. Dude even cites his anecdotal experience to claim psych meds don't work while at the same time claiming mental healthcare is full of psuedoscience and vaguely endorsing something that sounds an aweful lot like Freudian psychoanalysis. So that was pretty rich. Well, if we're comparing anecdotes, my experience is that when a certain relative of mine was on lithium, she didn't try to stab me in the bathtub with a steak knife to keep the demons from getting me and when she wasn't on her lithium, she did.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  Well, if someone is only peaceful while on meds, I would not feel at peace at all with that person around. People forget their meds/choose not to take them. And then all that was supressed comes out. So does your anecdote sounds. So maybe if she would have had a real therapy which does not rely on meds so much, she would know how to handle her demons better when beeing without drugs.
  - thomasfedb 8y ago
    The drugs do actually work. We have long acting forms (e.g. four injections per year) of some medications which help when people truely are dangerous to themselves or others.
- andrewvc 8y ago
  Psych meds for something like schizophrenia or acute psychosis are very different than for things like ADD, Depression, etc. Additionally, it is objectively true that these disorders are overdiagnosed (there are many studies backing this up). Some psychiatric issues fit much more closely with the disease model of medicine (like psychosis), and others are in a huge gray area. Most of psychiatric work is in that gray area and does a poor job of it. Even a former DSM chair thinks so. I highly recommend reading "saving normal" for more info.
- noetic_techy 8y ago
  I wouldn't call experience handling hundreds of patients in in a major metro area such as NY City "anecdotal". None of this smelled of alt-med ranting. It's the true accounts of a therapist who saw the deficiencies of the system from the inside.
d33 8y ago
Autogenerated transcript for those who don't want to sit at the video for half an hour: https://pastebin.com/XCe5Kctr https://pastebin.com/XCe5Kctr
biophysboy 8y ago
I wish he had gone into more detail about the specific issues with anti-depressants. Most anti-depressants target serotonin or norepinephrine because the medical industry is still more or less following the "monoamine hypothesis". The hypothesis goes like this: monoamine neurotransmitters are crucial in the human brain, depressed people have depleted levels of them, therefore we should give them a drug that prevents their reuptake. But there are issues. SSRIs take roughly 5 hours to become bioavailable, but the positive effects of antidepressants take weeks. Why? If the core issue was depleted serotonin levels, shouldn't the person be happier same-day? Perhaps I'm building a strawman (I doubt med professionals believe the mono-amine hypothesis either), but antidepressants are being prescribed at record rates, and they are being increasingly trusted by the public. Why? The science is trial and questionnaire, the drug efficacy is low, and the side effects are many.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  > But there are issues. SSRIs take roughly 5 hours to become bioavailable, but the positive effects of antidepressants take weeks. Why? If the core issue was depleted serotonin levels, shouldn't the person be happier same-day? Also we don't see negative effects on non-depressed people that take drugs to reduce serotonin levels (or so I was told).
- outlace 8y ago
  Most SSRI’s are prescribed by general practitioners and often with fairly low thresholds. I’ve seen interactions like this: Patient comes in to follow up high blood pressure. Doctor: Have you been feeling depressed lately? Patient: Well, yeah I have actually. Doctor: Do you want to start a medication for that? Patient: Uh, ok. Most psychiatrists would not do that. And I think psychiatrists at academic centers would not pretend to know exactly how SSRIs work at this point. Nonetheless, SSRIs have a modest effect on average but for some patients they’re life changing. Recently met someone who was so depressed she could barely get out of bed in the morning. Started on the right Med (after a first failed trial) and she’s been happy ever since (more than a decade). Soon enough we’ll be able to specifically identify which patients are likely to be good responders and who won’t.
carapace 8y ago
reading this is like taking a time-machine back to the dark ages. It's like the "Bring out yer dead!" scene in Monty Python's "Holy Grail", only not funny. For the love of God, use Neuro-linguistic Programming. The "vicarious traumatization" wouldn't be a problem if you used techniques that don't require reliving the trauma! It would be healthier for both the therapist and the client. There are repeatable algorithms for dealing with e.g. early life trauma. You can actually "go back in time" and relive a different life and have it massively and permanently affect your real-world present-day life. One of the strangest and saddest things about psychology is the disconnect between practitioners and researchers on the one hand, and the cutting-edge state-of-the-art techniques and "schools" on the other. (The NLP wikipedia page is all about how it's a pseudo-science. Sheesh!)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

What are good countries/societies that have good mental health systems? What does that even look like? Is this a uniquely American problem?

intralizee 8y ago
Canada is better than United States from my experience of living in both countries. I sought help with gender dysphoria in the United States. Ended up being drugged with antipsychotics, while stuck in a hospital for two months against my will and when I just wanted to start HRT. Doctor wrote untrue statements on my medical records and I couldn't find anyway to sue since I was a poor university student at the time. Almost resulted in suicide. Insurance was billed approximately $55,000 Now I'm in Canada and I'm suicidal from the past events in life but I can see a psychiatrist once a week. She doesn't recommend drugs and mostly just wants to talk with trying to improve my outlook. I'm trying to get death with dignity in Switzerland and got a positive evaluation from her after several months. Everything in Canada is covered since I was born in Canada (citizenship). I'm in Montréal and from what I've seen most doctors don't push prescription drugs compared to what I saw in United States (Michigan). Canada also has a phone number (similar to 911) but is a direct line to speak to a nurse or social worker for help. People here actually can get help concerning their health right away and not fear having to pay anything. edit: I think the cost of the healthcare in the USA is why people that don't get help, end up mass shooting and mental health stigma is a result of people not being able to afford it; trying to rationalize it's for people really messed up (not them).
- muglug 8y ago
  I think the cost of healthcare has something to do with it, but surely the culprit is the gun culture that's everywhere you look the moment you leave big coastal cities. The culture that says - "feel threatened? Reach for your gun!" Also, second what other people are saying - I'm so sorry you were hurt for so long. I hope that you stick around a while, continuing to advocate online for the trans community.
  - OpenBSD-reich 8y ago
    Oh please. Guns are no more the root of gun violence than BitTorrent is the root of digital piracy. Gun control is the cheap easy path to kudos and biscuits, where improving the mental health system is the long tiring hardwork nobody wants to do. Muslim examples in Europe have shown vehicles and knives to be just as effective. Last but not least, if you vote away my hobby/toy, don't whine like a little piggy when I rally others to vote away your hobby/toy. Government is force which should be used sparingly and responsibly.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      > Muslim examples As you've almost spotted, the problem is one of radicalisation rather than either gun ownership per se or mental health. Other countries have guns. Other countries have people with depression or PTSD. Mass shootings in other countries are generally correctly labelled as terrorism. But people are unwilling to realise that the American mass shooting problem is one of terrorism.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - cheez 8y ago
        Do you think the people driving trucks into people have no mental health issues?
        pjc50 8y ago
        Some of them, probably. But not necessarily all of them, and I don't think it's a necessary precondition. I've certainly not heard of very many suicide bombers or mass shooters that had diagnosed but unmanaged mental health conditions. Is someone having political beliefs that they're willing to die/kill for a sign of mental illness?
        cheez 8y ago
        > Is someone having political beliefs that they're willing to die/kill for a sign of mental illness? I think you're making an assumption that this is what is happening. What do unsuccessful, captured suicide bombers say?
- nowarninglabel 8y ago
  Thanks for documenting your story, appreciated reading through one of your blog posts and would recommend others to take a look.
- vSanjo 8y ago
  You don't know me, and I don't know you, but I hope the words of a real person from a different country behind a keyboard help you at least get through your day, week, month or year. Best of luck to you, friend. Whatever your endeavours, however you -truly- want things to be, I hope it goes the direction you plan.
- cheez 8y ago
  Geez, sounds tough. You seem like a smart person, I think you'd be worth knowing.
mjevans 8y ago
At least in the US: * Health-care is a cost center. * Denying Health-care is a profit center. * The populace has been conned in to believing it's an "insurance" * vvv The population also mostly doesn't realize, at a logical level, that those without coverage still factor in to costs. * Increased suffering * Increased crime * Decreased GDP (both from less able workers and more broken windows) * Actual costs of care are passed along as inflated prices. I would really like, and as long as there weren't other blockers would vote, for candidates that supported at least /basic/ healthcare for all. Profits to be had in line cutting during non-triage critical moments.
hiker512 8y ago
Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finnland, Austria, Switzerland, France, Netherlands. Not sure about the other countries in Europe. But honestly, every time I hear anything about the American healthcare system, I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry.

intralizee 8y ago

Key points from the video: 1) People mostly benefit from having someone to talk to about their problems. Drugs apparently aren't much help. 2) People with the most trauma are the ones that have the least finances to pay for treatments. 3) Most trauma is from early life. 4) The therapist has no support from colleagues and cannot talk openly. When someone mentions suicide its recommended to send the person straight to the hospital and to be medicated (Video author does not agree). 5) The responsibility is too much, hearing the horrors and being on the minds of the harmed person.

phnofive 8y ago
Thanks for the summary, as it’s the only way I’d have heard this person’s view. 1) paints a broad and inaccurate view unless there is more specificity about what kind of medication is being discussed. 4) & 5) are well taken, though; where do professionals with confidentiality restrictions get help, each other?
- intralizee 8y ago
  He didn't really discuss what kind of medication. My interpretation is he feels medication is pushed too much and rarely solves the problem. He mentioned how people wanted to taper off and eventually stop taking prescription medication. He didn't like how he isn't allowed to help with that area. Also he voiced how the cost difference for someone staying in the hospital as an impatient is very high compared to seeing him. Insurance will try to prevent patients from seeing him 3 days per week and only want once a week (even if 3 days is helpful). Insurance companies have every detail about a patient and demand it without respecting privacy.
  - withdavidli 8y ago
    Happy to see you clarified your take on point one. While summaries are helpful, it's playing the telephone game on interpretation. It's better to view the source material whenever possible.
- bshimmin 8y ago

withdavidli 8y ago

It's a profession that's mentally and emotionally draining. My education background is in psychology, worked at a mental institution for a few months as a mental health assistant. Never met a psychologist that was actively encouraging students to go the therapist route, in fact the opposite. It's something to think long and hard about. One memorable encounter was an aunt of my friend literally grabbed me by the arm when she found out I was planning to be a psychologist and advised against it. Thought "who is this crazy lady", she was head psychologist of several institutions for the district...

kopo 8y ago
>> in fact the opposite What are you telling them to do? I have a psychiatrist friend who consults at the medical center, in a college town. She is getting called in so much she wants to move to a different town.
- withdavidli 8y ago
  To know what they're getting into. It's mostly a thankless job. One of the OP's video talks about how most therapist just wants the easy clients and refer all their hard ones to the YouTuber. So it will vary greatly depending on who your clients are. Imagine the difference between being a therapist for silicon valley tech employees vs a mental hospital, prison, or juvenile detention center. If they do their own practice, it's much like any other business, picking the right clients goes a long way in making your job easier and how much money you can make. Psychiatrist are different than psychologist. The former goes to medical school and can prescribe drugs.
chippy 8y ago
> Thought "who is this crazy lady" Did you become a psychologist?
- withdavidli 8y ago
  Nope. The mental health assistant job knocked it out of me. Nothing like being in an environment where you have to be on guard for your safety to really want an office job (friends had teeth knocked out, another head-butted ended with concussion and I believe migraines for rest of her life, I almost had a finger bitten off, and other coworkers got stabbed with utensils).

julienmarie 8y ago

Something interesting is making a mental "disorder" a sickness. A mental trait becomes a disorder when this trait no more compatible with social norms ( it breaks the order of things, hence disorder ). Hence the pain. And we assume a pain is a sickness that can be cured, medicated. Medication do not solve the root of the pain. Our brain is more than a chemical balance. It's a neural network, trained on the training set of our childhood. There is this fundamental age around 6-7 years old where the child creates its identity picture, its definition of self, which becomes the blueprint of its personality trait and evolution. This blueprint causes what psychoanalysts call "neurosis". When digging into it, there are so many things that makes sense in the field of psychoanalysis, and the parallels with neurosciences and even AI are staggering. Little nuggets I found enlightening in my day to day perception of life : - We learn language and the meaning of things from others ( our parents usually ). As a consequence, we naturally expect truth and meaning to come from outside. That's why we look for confirmation from others. That's why we expect the people we fall in love with to give our life meaning. - We create our identities based on our environment. We define ourselves against the others as to define is to draw a boundary, a difference. That's why you'll often see the cliché in family where if the elder's dominant trait/definition is to be good at school, then the second child will take the opposite route. - Our neurosis is mostly our limiting factor to approach life. This is what we fight against everyday, this is the wall between what we can be and what we are. I understand this can be seen as a controversial view for many. I'm no psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, but was raised in a psychiatrist / psychoanalyst family. A weird but enriching experience.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
> As a consequence, we naturally expect truth and meaning to come from outside. That's why we look for confirmation from others. Yes, we look for confirmation, just like we give it, but that's not all, we also decide how to weigh opinions based on our opinion of the people holding that opinion. I mean, how can others give you confirmation, if they in turn get their truth and meaning from the outside? That'd just be pointers going in a loop. By the same token "the outside" can tell you anything, you can tell "it" anything.
- 8y ago

analyst74 8y ago

The field of psychiatry is actually undergoing a lot of changes and improvements. With progress in understanding how our brain works at chemical level, and newer drugs to balance the chemicals when they are out of balance. Many of the previously untreatable mental problems are now treatable with medicine. That is unfortunately only available to psychiatrists, who has medical designation. source: a psychiatrist friend

zaroth 8y ago
At a macro level (population surveys of mental health) I think we can safely say your friend is biased, and that the field is basically stumbling around in the dark ages and generally unable to offer much help. Didn’t the latest DSM get basically outright rejected by the NIH?
patcon 8y ago
> With progress in understanding [...] and newer drugs to balance the chemicals [...] Many [...] mental problems are now treatable with medicine. The catch here is that those deciding what "progress" is, are the same therapists and health professionals of the sort speaking in the video. And as they said, they are under immense pressure of their own. The alternative to "medication" is social support, of which they themselves are often primary sources. They are overburdened themselves and often under-supported by gov, so they're under stress (therapists for well-off people excluded). tl;dr - they have a huge incentive (for preservation of their own sanity) to see "medication" as progress, because it relieves their own burden (which is structural to system). I'm not saying this is malevolent or judging anyone to be bad, but it's something to be wary of Disclaimer/source: sibling is community social worker

throwaway2018-2 8y ago

One of the things that really scares me about working with a therapist is that I have suicidal thoughts a lot. Like, I don't deserve to be alive or that I want to die. I'm still pretty productive, make a good salary, was recently promoted. I'm scared that if I were really open about these feelings, something bad would happen, that I could be hospitalized. Which feels like a real step backwards to me. A step towards not actually getting better.

jakegarelick 8y ago
If it makes you feel better, I seriously doubt a (certified) one will do that. The smart ones realize that hospitalization can really derail your life and make you an even higher suicide risk. Additionally, there is a big difference (in my opinion) between suicidal thoughts and actually acting on those thoughts. Just from reading your post it doesn’t sound like you have much to worry about.
viraptor 8y ago
You can find therapists who has remote sessions over internet. If you're worried about someone acting against your will, you can have a Skype session without revealing your real name. Even with someone in another country - if your primary language is English, you have lots of options. You can't get things prescribed this way. But it doesn't sound like that's an issue here.
julienmarie 8y ago
I agree with jakegarelick, a good therapist will not hospitalize you. What matters is for you to talk. Why would anybody not deserve to be alive? Life is fundamentally nonsensical, and our struggle / cross ( depending on how you see it ) is to put meaning into it. This is why life is at the same time a tragedy and a liberating experience. We are ephemeral, and not this important at the individual level. Only thing that matters is not harming others, eventually doing good to others if we are lucky, and finding joy in little things ( intellectual endeavours, earthly pleasures, art, sunsets, you name it ). If it can help, a reading that helped me when I was deep in depression in my 20's was the The Gay Science, by Nietzsche. Don't read it in one go. Keep it with you, and read a few aphorisms every day. Some three liners aphorisms from Nietzsche made more impact in my life than everything else I read combined. This book literally saved my life.

DubiousPusher 8y ago

I was hoping for something insightful but really got more of the same antiestablishment alt-med ranting you'll find elsewhere on the web. Dude even cites his anecdotal experience to claim psych meds don't work while at the same time claiming mental healthcare is full of psuedoscience and vaguely endorsing something that sounds an aweful lot like Freudian psychoanalysis. So that was pretty rich. Well, if we're comparing anecdotes, my experience is that when a certain relative of mine was on lithium, she didn't try to stab me in the bathtub with a steak knife to keep the demons from getting me and when she wasn't on her lithium, she did.

hutzlibu 8y ago
Well, if someone is only peaceful while on meds, I would not feel at peace at all with that person around. People forget their meds/choose not to take them. And then all that was supressed comes out. So does your anecdote sounds. So maybe if she would have had a real therapy which does not rely on meds so much, she would know how to handle her demons better when beeing without drugs.
- thomasfedb 8y ago
  The drugs do actually work. We have long acting forms (e.g. four injections per year) of some medications which help when people truely are dangerous to themselves or others.
andrewvc 8y ago
Psych meds for something like schizophrenia or acute psychosis are very different than for things like ADD, Depression, etc. Additionally, it is objectively true that these disorders are overdiagnosed (there are many studies backing this up). Some psychiatric issues fit much more closely with the disease model of medicine (like psychosis), and others are in a huge gray area. Most of psychiatric work is in that gray area and does a poor job of it. Even a former DSM chair thinks so. I highly recommend reading "saving normal" for more info.
noetic_techy 8y ago
I wouldn't call experience handling hundreds of patients in in a major metro area such as NY City "anecdotal". None of this smelled of alt-med ranting. It's the true accounts of a therapist who saw the deficiencies of the system from the inside.

d33 8y ago

Autogenerated transcript for those who don't want to sit at the video for half an hour: https://pastebin.com/XCe5Kctr https://pastebin.com/XCe5Kctr

biophysboy 8y ago

I wish he had gone into more detail about the specific issues with anti-depressants. Most anti-depressants target serotonin or norepinephrine because the medical industry is still more or less following the "monoamine hypothesis". The hypothesis goes like this: monoamine neurotransmitters are crucial in the human brain, depressed people have depleted levels of them, therefore we should give them a drug that prevents their reuptake. But there are issues. SSRIs take roughly 5 hours to become bioavailable, but the positive effects of antidepressants take weeks. Why? If the core issue was depleted serotonin levels, shouldn't the person be happier same-day? Perhaps I'm building a strawman (I doubt med professionals believe the mono-amine hypothesis either), but antidepressants are being prescribed at record rates, and they are being increasingly trusted by the public. Why? The science is trial and questionnaire, the drug efficacy is low, and the side effects are many.

johnchristopher 8y ago
> But there are issues. SSRIs take roughly 5 hours to become bioavailable, but the positive effects of antidepressants take weeks. Why? If the core issue was depleted serotonin levels, shouldn't the person be happier same-day? Also we don't see negative effects on non-depressed people that take drugs to reduce serotonin levels (or so I was told).
outlace 8y ago
Most SSRI’s are prescribed by general practitioners and often with fairly low thresholds. I’ve seen interactions like this: Patient comes in to follow up high blood pressure. Doctor: Have you been feeling depressed lately? Patient: Well, yeah I have actually. Doctor: Do you want to start a medication for that? Patient: Uh, ok. Most psychiatrists would not do that. And I think psychiatrists at academic centers would not pretend to know exactly how SSRIs work at this point. Nonetheless, SSRIs have a modest effect on average but for some patients they’re life changing. Recently met someone who was so depressed she could barely get out of bed in the morning. Started on the right Med (after a first failed trial) and she’s been happy ever since (more than a decade). Soon enough we’ll be able to specifically identify which patients are likely to be good responders and who won’t.

carapace 8y ago

reading this is like taking a time-machine back to the dark ages. It's like the "Bring out yer dead!" scene in Monty Python's "Holy Grail", only not funny. For the love of God, use Neuro-linguistic Programming. The "vicarious traumatization" wouldn't be a problem if you used techniques that don't require reliving the trauma! It would be healthier for both the therapist and the client. There are repeatable algorithms for dealing with e.g. early life trauma. You can actually "go back in time" and relive a different life and have it massively and permanently affect your real-world present-day life. One of the strangest and saddest things about psychology is the disconnect between practitioners and researchers on the one hand, and the cutting-edge state-of-the-art techniques and "schools" on the other. (The NLP wikipedia page is all about how it's a pseudo-science. Sheesh!)

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