On Psychiatry

[docorion]

Some of you have heard my psychiatry rant. In short, it goes like this: Psychiatrists are not doctors, in the "physician" sense. They don't do any of the things I recognize as "being a doctor"; they don't examine patients or their pathologic equivalents (xrays, tissue slides, lab values-doctors do that stuff in some specialities and are still "

Comments

[wolfkitn]

Well, I'm a social worker, and I hear you loud and clear. :-) I'm also exhausted so I'm not going to say to what extent I agree, just now... but I'm sure I agree at least a bit.

I think that mental health work depends a lot more on what the tech fields call "soft skills" and less on data gathering of test results, diagnostics, etc. There are some of those out there, too; I can measure someone's weight and look at a growth chart, and get an idea of whether they have an eating disorder, and then I can look at their blood's CO2 level and BUN and get a pretty good idea about whether I'm going to have to work on straight anorexia, or bulimia, or hyper-exercising with them; but the *work* will be all about forming, maintaining, and then (essentially) using/exploiting the relationship that we develop and that I develop with their family to help them make the changes that will then affect those hard signs. It's much less about giving them a medication (though medications can help), or performing a surgery, or stuff like that.

But it works well for me, because all of those things that it is about are the things that I'm good at, and enjoy doing... :-)

I'm always happy when a member of a group critiques that group. Thanks for the book recommendation.