Psychiatric patient in hospital.
One of the problems within psychiatry is that people suffering symptoms and problems associated with serious mental illness are often robbed of their hope of ever being able to “recover.”
In other words it is largely a “non recovery environment” based in its approach, methodology and practice.
For example, I am being told that mental illness is a “brain disease”, and I’m not entirely sure it is. And I’ve spent the last 15 months trying to figure it out.
In my case I’m firmly convinced my mental illness or “disease” is caused by trauma and abuse suffered over many years.
I however am being told by psychiatrists that I “have a chemical imbalance of the brain”, which they say is “genetically determined” without being able to tell me exactly which gene or genetic marker is responsible for my illness, and that I will have this condition for “life.”
That there is nothing really I can do about it and I will be forever limited and restricted in how I live life, because there is no cure as such?
That I must take these tablets (anti psychotics), which I find dulls my mind, hampers my creativity, sensitivity , sexuality and causes all sorts of other serious side effects, including like drowsiness, dizziness, blurriness of vision, dry mouth, sensitivity to light…and on and on it goes.
That I have to do this (take medication) because I am “sick” and I can’t see it, but they can – so I must trust them and do exactly what they say. I will also be on them, according to these doctors the rest of my life. Where is the hope or recovery in that?
The problem is that this is not a “medical diagnosis”, as far as I can determine, especially when I try to talk with medical professionals about this subject – who seem just as confused as I am trying to understand it in many cases?
Now from everything that I can see psychiatric diagnosis and labels are gained by just observing behavior, feelings, judging someones emotions, which is highly subjective and arbitrary interpreted, when you really think about it depending on the doctor, based on his/her own interpretation and how they want to classify your symptoms as.
In other words psychiatric diagnosis and labels are not “medical diseases”, with known scientific medical fact. They are only descriptions of your behavior/feelings and emotions, by someone trained to classify them in a certain way, according to the DSM 5 or Psychiatry Mental Disorder Diagnosis Manual, which is roughly 945 pages if I remember right. And when I look at some of these various diagnosis, criteria there is a lot of overlap here. Its also very confusing trying to sort all this out. And I believe myself to be a relatively intelligent man.
Additionally there are only like 4 or 5 categories of medications to treat all these different psychiatric diagnoses, that include such things as “mood stabilizers, anti anxiety and anti depressants. And I’m currently on all of these by the way.
But like I said, the main problem I have is that psychiatry seems to rob me and others of our hope to ever be able to recover in the first place. That makes it very dangerous in my mind.