I think I've found the health profession more hated and misunderstood than MD's

[TZ]

Psychiatrists..apparantly going to Med School and getting a residency to practice psychiatry makes one a Freudian Fraud who only is out to charge you as much money as possible. YEESH. Must be a lot of scientologists around here.
That and the fact that most people don't even FUCKING KNOW what a psychiatrist does. (mix em up with psychologists)

[Warpy]

1. That's partially because of the Calivinist prejudice

that all mental illness is a failure in morality. Depressed? Pull yourself together. Schizophrenic? Don't be silly, that stuff isn't there, pull yourself together. Mental retardation? You're just lazy, pull yourself together.

Such people will see any mental health professionals as frauds.

[Odin2005]

3. Or "Asperger's? Quit making excuses!!"

That one I got for much of my life. :eyes:

[varkam]

5. Quit making excuses, Odin.

:D

[trotsky]

11. Or, the cause of all those conditions:

a lack of Vitamin D. ;)

[JitterbugPerfume]

2. yeah-that thread was pretty bizarre

I would have thought that DUers would be more enlightened but then I tend to be an optimist in spite of my experience here at DU land

[varkam]

4. I hate psychiatrists.

Well, I guess that's a bit inaccurate. I will say that all of the psychiatrists that I have met have all be fucking nuts and completely lacking in any interpersonal skills whatsoever. I mean - if you're going to be that bad with people, why not go into pathology or something?

[TZ]

6. At least you know what Psychiatrists are and that they are not "frauds"

and "completely lacking in interpersonal skills"...I'm guessing you met the surgeon washouts...I'm not QUITE joking either...

[varkam]

7. I take it back, I do know one psychiatrist that...

is a very decent guy, very intelligent, and has good people skills. But that's like one out of 20 or so that I've met. Psychiatrists also make the absolute worst patients at my job - always wanting to know all the details of their study. Argh!

[lizerdbits]

12. I know I lack interpersonal skills

which is why I work in a lab. Too bad some people never figure that out.

[semillama]

13. For me, it was archaeology

when you're trying to figure out what a bunch of dead people were up to hundreds of years ago by riffling through their trash - can't get any less interpersonal than that?

[realisticphish]

14. That's why I would seek out a psychologist first

more post grad emphasis on counseling and interpersonal communication.

[varkam]

15. That's not to say psychiatrists don't have a place...

after all, they can Rx you drugs (and sometimes you need the drugs) - but if you want to talk, yeah, seek out a psychologist / psychotherapist.

[realisticphish]

16. oh, certainly

and a lot of good research is done by psychiatrists. My undergrad was in psych, and the psychiatrist aspect was always presented as the more academic, reasearch-based career. But that may have just been the biases of my program

[Djinn]

28. There's just as many mad psychologists out there

unsurprisingly people with their own issues are often interested in the field of mental health, in my previous job I meet social workers, psychologists, psych nurses and a host of other professions within the mental health field, plenty of them could use some help themselves but that doesn't actually mean they can't be good at their jobs.

I know lots of union staff who wouldn't dream of getting the union involved in their issues at work, I know plenty of MD's with physical illnesses, there are countless divorced marriage counselors and childless childcare workers etc

[Orrex]

8. That's because you're crazy

Everyone knows that psychiatry has its roots in astrology.

[realisticphish]

9. haha nt

[TZ]

10. !

:rofl:

[bluedawg12]

17. Psychiatrist to his nurse: "Just say we're very busy. Don't keep saying 'It's a madhouse.'"

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
A psychiatrist met a friend and exclaimed, "I heard you died. "

"But you see I'm alive ," smiled the friend.

"Impossible," said the psychiatrist. "The man who told me is much more reliable than you. "
,,,,,,,,,,,,
http://psychwatch.blogspot.com/2007/07/one-third-of-male-psychiatrists-will-be.html
Monday, July 23, 2007
One third of male psychiatrists will be disciplined for sexual misconduct sometime in their careers.
I have been playing with numbers, and I come up with something interesting that deserves to be a well publicized factoid.

[HamdenRice]

18. I think it's also because psychiatry has gone through "delegitimating crises" more than other fields

For years, psychiatry was the "talking cure" and Freudian analysis was taken seriously. It was very expensive, took a long time, and seemed to place the burden of getting better on the patient. The psychiatrist literally was taught to sit and listen and say nothing while the patient mostly rambled on.

Then two things happened. Advances in brain physiology and neurochemistry showed that many diseases that had been thought to have been caused by bad experiences were caused by physical disease. And, double blind studies showed that the talking cure had little effect on psychiatric problems.

Those are pretty devastating crises of legitimacy that go to the very question of whether it was medicine or fraud. Just because the doctors may have been well trained in medicine did not mean that they could not have been engaging in quackery when it came to psychiatry.

Now the profession is going through a second crisis, with concerns about the over prescription of drugs.

For the public, it's hard to understand how a profession can get things so wrong and still be taken seriously, and lots of people transfer that suspicion to the individual psychiatrist.

[TZ]

19. Actually when it comes to

Over prescription of antidepressants I think GP MDs are far more guilty psychiatrists have people coming to them that generally do have illnesses..because of the stigma of mental illness most people who just want a "happy pill" are going to go to a general doctor.I also think the stigma of shame around mental illness does not help..and it's idiots like Tom Cruise and Scientologists who have made this attitude worse

[uriel1972]

20. I'm very happy with my psychiatrist

and my psychologist. I guess I lucked out when it came to mental health care. The drugs they give me work and I can live with the side-effects. As for the Scientologists, I say Go Evil Aliens Go!!!!1111!!!

[progressoid]

23. I went to a good psychiatrist but he retired.

Since then, not much luck so I've had to rely on Merlot, Shiraz, & occasionally a Cab or Beaujolais.

[LeftishBrit]

21. Well, try some of the stereotypes associated with being a research-psychologist

You are a Freudian psychoanalyst/ do cruel experiments on animals/ read people's minds/ treat other people as 'lab rats' (I suffered some exasperating stereotypes just today).

[varkam]

22. Why dont you just admit it?

Why do you hate animals?


:D

[bluedawg12]

24. There is probably an element of fear or mistrust

in professionals that deal with behavior. They imagine that as being potentially manipulative.

Many people still feel, for example, that clincal depression is a matter of character,or character weakness, and neurophysiology and neurochemistry is still largely misunderstood by the public, I suspect.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. You read people's minds?

That'd be a pretty cool stereotype.

[LeftishBrit]

26. 'So are you reading my mind then?' 'Can you tell what I'm thinking from the way I move my hands?'

Usually the stereotypes run a bit more to 'All psychologists are crazy themselves' or 'Your subject is just one of those silly soft options'; but the other day someone went paranoid on me and started accusing me of taking and keeping 'research notes' on them. It was all very weird.

[realisticphish]

27. I have a psych undergrad degree

and even I get people saying "are you running an experiment on us?" with total seriousness