I'd Rather See The Witch Doctor
First, let me say that I think some forms of therapy are useful, if for no other reason than they are comforting to the recipient. And that psychiatric medication has its place - it's just often used inappropriately, and that's driven in large part by marketing and the way our current health care system works. This is also primarily based on personal experience and opinion, and you're completely welcome to have your own perspective, but this happens to be mine.
Medicine in large part is an awful lot like sympathetic magic; shake the thunder stick and it will rain, eventually. We rely on "scientific" method to tell us that our drugs and therapies really work, but our true understanding of biology and psychology is really fairly limited and our testing tends to be short-sighted. I've known more than one person who has been treated for one issue with a drug or therapy that destroyed something else; how many people were harmed by Vioxx? By thalidomide? How many other drugs are killing us even though we believe they're helping us?
The drug industry is behind a lot of this. They want to make money, and so they do a little bit of sympathetic magic, they shake their thunder stick and claim they made it rain. Their testing methods are poorly policed and often rather unscientific; the big drug companies spend more money on MARKETING than they do on testing. This is sick, utterly sick. Some things really cannot be left to be regulated by the free market. In theory, the market WOULD eventually regulate it, by the change of consumer habits - but it would require major harm to a lot of people's well being before that happens. This is NOT OK.
The WORST of these is the use of drugs on mental health issues. Talk about sympathetic magic - there is NO scientific test, no physical litmus to show the validity of the drugs being used for psychiatry. No diagnosis of upset brain chemistry is possible at this time. I'm not one of the folks claiming that these issues do not exist - there are plenty of them, just look for "the truth about psychiatry" on YouTube - but I'm not a big believer, either. My own experience with psychiatric drugs has been less than satisfactory.
I was prescribed Lexapro during my last quarter at Shoreline Community College. I went from being moody and sad to being totally fucking suicidal. Later, with a little more life experience, I can safely compare the feeling to that of being "e-tarded", the midweek slump that comes after a weekend of abuse of my favorite non-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. I didn't know it at the time, though, and was even more crippled by the effect of the drug than I was by my own brain.
I think that there are as many flaws with talk therapy, as well. It has the potential to be immensely valuable, but the practices are highly driven by trend. Hey, who remembers the Ritual Abuse scandal from the '80's and early 90's? There were a number of court cases; later I may see if I can find one to cite for you all. These cases revealed that psychologists were coaching their subjects to look for symptoms of "repressed memories" and then suggesting to these people that those behaviors were the results of horrific, repressed childhood memories. Folks who were desperate for validation, approval, successful treatment of their emotional problems developed these suggested memories until they were "true". Ask a toddler to point to where their daddies touched them enough times and only give them positive reinforcement when they indicate the genitals - they'll tell you just exactly what you want to hear. You don't have to torture someone to get this result - just give positive coaching, and you can teach just about anybody to remember whatever you want them to.
I am NOT saying that ritual abuse never happens, or that the child pointing to the doll's crotch hasn't been harmed - just that our methods of determining this are suspect. I've personally known people who have been taught to be victims by well-meaning psychologists. Ask me about my brother's ex girlfriend some time, or about a teacher at my high school who was accused years after the fact of molesting children at his wife's preschool by the parents of a student who had failed his class. There are a lot of people out there who have survived real trauma (including myself, thank you) and have need of some therapy and help, but there's a lot of people out there who are glad to let their psychologist train them to watch for "triggers" so that they can pass off their own behavior on past trauma that may be highly exaggerated or nonexistent.
I have my problems. But I am certainly not reliving my traumatic memories over and over again. I do not have suppressed memories, and in fact remember every moment of my traumas with the same clarity that I remember my own phone number or a friend's face. I have trouble sleeping and rarely remember my dreams, but it's not because I have the same nightmares I had when I was a child or because some unknown trigger is driving me to insomnia. More likely I can't sleep because I don't know how I'll get all the bills paid, a worry I certainly never had when I was eight. The other side is true, too - I was a sleepwalker at three, well before I ever went through anything bad. I, like most childhood sleepwalkers, outgrew it.
I am also not denying that those things that have happened to me over the years don't affect me today. I learned a lot of distrust early on and never really overcame some of the effect of that - I don't make friends easily. This sounds weird to people who know me, but I'm really a little shy and have issues with social anxiety. I front a lot in part to protect my fragile emotions, but I've made myself sheltered and vulnerable in my own way. I don't know how to be any other way, and maybe the right therapist or the right treatment program could help me.
Fucked up, though, is the fact that our health care system does not address emotional and mental health well at all. I've ranted to this effect before. Even the BEST health care usually offers 12 office visits a year or a certain amount of in-patient treatment. This means I would be able to see my doctor about once a month, enough to keep my medications regulated - or I could check in to the nuthouse when I finally break down. This is NOT OK, but it makes the guys at Pfizer rich.
Therapists charge at least $60/hour and usually more; a few offer sliding scale fees that are offered to people who make less than our nation's joke of a poverty line. I'm functional enough to get up and go to the $job every day, therefore I don't qualify for help. WTF?
I'm a little bit (okay, a lot) divided by the whole thing. There's the fact that I recognize that I have problems that I can't fix myself. Add a strong distrust for the practices of psychology and especially psychiatry. Throw in an inability to get access to those tools that are available, no matter how questionable they are, because I am neither too broken to be functional nor successful enough to foot the exhorbitant bill out-of-pocket. I hope nobody wonders why I'm bitter and angry a lot of the time.
Medicine in large part is an awful lot like sympathetic magic; shake the thunder stick and it will rain, eventually. We rely on "scientific" method to tell us that our drugs and therapies really work, but our true understanding of biology and psychology is really fairly limited and our testing tends to be short-sighted. I've known more than one person who has been treated for one issue with a drug or therapy that destroyed something else; how many people were harmed by Vioxx? By thalidomide? How many other drugs are killing us even though we believe they're helping us?
The drug industry is behind a lot of this. They want to make money, and so they do a little bit of sympathetic magic, they shake their thunder stick and claim they made it rain. Their testing methods are poorly policed and often rather unscientific; the big drug companies spend more money on MARKETING than they do on testing. This is sick, utterly sick. Some things really cannot be left to be regulated by the free market. In theory, the market WOULD eventually regulate it, by the change of consumer habits - but it would require major harm to a lot of people's well being before that happens. This is NOT OK.
The WORST of these is the use of drugs on mental health issues. Talk about sympathetic magic - there is NO scientific test, no physical litmus to show the validity of the drugs being used for psychiatry. No diagnosis of upset brain chemistry is possible at this time. I'm not one of the folks claiming that these issues do not exist - there are plenty of them, just look for "the truth about psychiatry" on YouTube - but I'm not a big believer, either. My own experience with psychiatric drugs has been less than satisfactory.
I was prescribed Lexapro during my last quarter at Shoreline Community College. I went from being moody and sad to being totally fucking suicidal. Later, with a little more life experience, I can safely compare the feeling to that of being "e-tarded", the midweek slump that comes after a weekend of abuse of my favorite non-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. I didn't know it at the time, though, and was even more crippled by the effect of the drug than I was by my own brain.
I think that there are as many flaws with talk therapy, as well. It has the potential to be immensely valuable, but the practices are highly driven by trend. Hey, who remembers the Ritual Abuse scandal from the '80's and early 90's? There were a number of court cases; later I may see if I can find one to cite for you all. These cases revealed that psychologists were coaching their subjects to look for symptoms of "repressed memories" and then suggesting to these people that those behaviors were the results of horrific, repressed childhood memories. Folks who were desperate for validation, approval, successful treatment of their emotional problems developed these suggested memories until they were "true". Ask a toddler to point to where their daddies touched them enough times and only give them positive reinforcement when they indicate the genitals - they'll tell you just exactly what you want to hear. You don't have to torture someone to get this result - just give positive coaching, and you can teach just about anybody to remember whatever you want them to.
I am NOT saying that ritual abuse never happens, or that the child pointing to the doll's crotch hasn't been harmed - just that our methods of determining this are suspect. I've personally known people who have been taught to be victims by well-meaning psychologists. Ask me about my brother's ex girlfriend some time, or about a teacher at my high school who was accused years after the fact of molesting children at his wife's preschool by the parents of a student who had failed his class. There are a lot of people out there who have survived real trauma (including myself, thank you) and have need of some therapy and help, but there's a lot of people out there who are glad to let their psychologist train them to watch for "triggers" so that they can pass off their own behavior on past trauma that may be highly exaggerated or nonexistent.
I have my problems. But I am certainly not reliving my traumatic memories over and over again. I do not have suppressed memories, and in fact remember every moment of my traumas with the same clarity that I remember my own phone number or a friend's face. I have trouble sleeping and rarely remember my dreams, but it's not because I have the same nightmares I had when I was a child or because some unknown trigger is driving me to insomnia. More likely I can't sleep because I don't know how I'll get all the bills paid, a worry I certainly never had when I was eight. The other side is true, too - I was a sleepwalker at three, well before I ever went through anything bad. I, like most childhood sleepwalkers, outgrew it.
I am also not denying that those things that have happened to me over the years don't affect me today. I learned a lot of distrust early on and never really overcame some of the effect of that - I don't make friends easily. This sounds weird to people who know me, but I'm really a little shy and have issues with social anxiety. I front a lot in part to protect my fragile emotions, but I've made myself sheltered and vulnerable in my own way. I don't know how to be any other way, and maybe the right therapist or the right treatment program could help me.
Fucked up, though, is the fact that our health care system does not address emotional and mental health well at all. I've ranted to this effect before. Even the BEST health care usually offers 12 office visits a year or a certain amount of in-patient treatment. This means I would be able to see my doctor about once a month, enough to keep my medications regulated - or I could check in to the nuthouse when I finally break down. This is NOT OK, but it makes the guys at Pfizer rich.
Therapists charge at least $60/hour and usually more; a few offer sliding scale fees that are offered to people who make less than our nation's joke of a poverty line. I'm functional enough to get up and go to the $job every day, therefore I don't qualify for help. WTF?
I'm a little bit (okay, a lot) divided by the whole thing. There's the fact that I recognize that I have problems that I can't fix myself. Add a strong distrust for the practices of psychology and especially psychiatry. Throw in an inability to get access to those tools that are available, no matter how questionable they are, because I am neither too broken to be functional nor successful enough to foot the exhorbitant bill out-of-pocket. I hope nobody wonders why I'm bitter and angry a lot of the time.