Okay, reductionist materialism when it comes to this ONE thing....

[Maia]

I will never be a reductionist materialist about everything, and there's no use trying. But that's IT, I've HAD it; I really think I'll subscribe to that philosophy to at least some degree in ONE field, and that's psychiatry. I do not want to deal with ANY more nutty ideas about how indigo children shouldn't be taking Ritalin, or how ADHD brains just work differently and isn't that special, or how schizophrenia just means that you're seeing the world a little differently, or how post-traumatic stress syndrome is something that gee, vets should be able to just get over already...

(short foaming-at-the-mouth break.)

So, that's IT. My basis for not having to listen to any of this, anymore, is the intersection of psychiatry, psychology, and neurology,which represents by far the most interesting and exciting areas of research today. No, I'm not going to turn into a reductionist materialist about everything even in this area, but mental illness/disorders have a NEUROLOGICAL and neurobiological BASIS. No, that is not ALL they have, but that is the part which it makes the most sense to study right now, the most valuable and fruitful area, and since denying it always seems to lead to all of these weird New-Agey let's-deny-reality theories, well, that's it for me.

ETA:Oh, yeah-- why is this not in science/med/tech or something? Because it's my personal philosophy, that's why (with wild-eyed look)! Arrived at after much having-had-it-ness.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Are there any conditions that you think might not fit into the reductionist materialist [RM] paradigm? Perhaps personality disorders?

 

[Dunstan]

So, when other people reject arguments that they find lacking in evidentiary support, they are according to you not true skeptics, and merely "marching in lockstep". When you do it, of course, it's perfectly fine.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Maia- Have you ever considered a change of job? Like being a lumberjack, bricklayer , car mechanic -or something else that doesn't screw with your head quite so much?
Too much empathy is as harmful as not enough in your line of work.

 

[Frank Newgent]

delete

 

[PixyMisa]

I will never be a reductionist materialist about everything, and there's no use trying. But that's IT, I've HAD it; I really think I'll subscribe to that philosophy to at least some degree in ONE field, and that's psychiatry. I do not want to deal with ANY more nutty ideas about how indigo children shouldn't be taking Ritalin, or how ADHD brains just work differently and isn't that special, or how schizophrenia just means that you're seeing the world a little differently, or how post-traumatic stress syndrome is something that gee, vets should be able to just get over already...

Life could be so much simpler sometimes if instead of trying to persuade the persistently wrong-headed by logic and evidence you could just whack them on the head with a stick.

Alas, society, for some reason, has come to frown upon this.

So, that's IT. My basis for not having to listen to any of this, anymore, is the intersection of psychiatry, psychology, and neurology,which represents by far the most interesting and exciting areas of research today. No, I'm not going to turn into a reductionist materialist about everything even in this area, but mental illness/disorders have a NEUROLOGICAL and neurobiological BASIS. No, that is not ALL they have, but that is the part which it makes the most sense to study right now, the most valuable and fruitful area, and since denying it always seems to lead to all of these weird New-Agey let's-deny-reality theories, well, that's it for me.

Welcome to the club. Here's your stick.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

I do not want to deal with ANY more nutty ideas about how indigo children shouldn't be taking Ritalin, or how ADHD brains just work differently and isn't that special, or how schizophrenia just means that you're seeing the world a little differently, or how post-traumatic stress syndrome is something that gee, vets should be able to just get over already...

:huggle:

Feel your pain.

 

[Maia]

So, when other people reject arguments that they find lacking in evidentiary support, they are according to you not true skeptics, and merely "marching in lockstep". When you do it, of course, it's perfectly fine.

Whenever anyone commits basic errors in reasoning (clearly implying ad hominem fallacies, creating straw men and ignoring what was actually said, reasoning from false premises, putting words in people's mouths, deliberately confusing two completely different arguments and types of ideas with each other and pretending they are the same, being utterly off topic, etc.), there are some major problems with that. Points made or things said consisting of actual evidence relating to anything really occurring are certainly fine. It's a free country (well, at least when it comes to expressing these types of opinions...) and I'm through just letting this kind of thing pass without pointing it out for what it is or speaking up for myself. All done.


Actually, a very good argument can be made that personality disorders fit into the RM model better than most other types of mental disorders in some ways.
(

I really think I'll subscribe to that philosophy to at least some degree in ONE field

,
remember, and that means that the RM model will never cover everything.) Onno van der Hart and Ellert Nijerhuis theorize that structural dissociation of personality is the hallmark of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD has very specific symptom clusters, which overlap strongly with most personality disorders, and there's a lot of recent research which increasingly shows profound neurological changes as a result of PTSD. So we have this remarkable phenomenon where very specific events (such as combat) cause both very specific symptoms and identifiable neurobiological pathology. Nobody really knows what the intersection with PD's is yet, but there does seem to be one.

A particularly fascinating thing is that for the very first time, some medications are showing real results with some of the PD's, and they are the same ones which are being experimentally used for PTSD. (Both conditions have always been incredibly treatment-resistant to medication-- well, to anything else, too.) These are really neurological meds for epilepsy. Lamotrigine has some effect, but the real success is topiramate with PTSD. It's really not a psych med-- it's also been used for bipolar disorder, but it just isn't very successful for that (and from going over the studies carefully, I think that the successes have been with subjects who had co-occurring PD's.) An amazing combination of disciplines intersect here, I think, but without acknowledging the essential neurological basis of the disorders, it's impossible to get much of anywhere.

 

[mike3]

So, when other people reject arguments that they find lacking in evidentiary support, they are according to you not true skeptics, and merely "marching in lockstep". When you do it, of course, it's perfectly fine.

Most likely because he doesn't think the arguments do lack in evidentiary support.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

I will never be a reductionist materialist about everything, and there's no use trying. But that's IT, I've HAD it; I really think I'll subscribe to that philosophy to at least some degree in ONE field, and that's psychiatry. I do not want to deal with ANY more nutty ideas about how indigo children shouldn't be taking Ritalin, or how ADHD brains just work differently and isn't that special, or how schizophrenia just means that you're seeing the world a little differently, or how post-traumatic stress syndrome is something that gee, vets should be able to just get over already...

(short foaming-at-the-mouth break.)

So, that's IT. My basis for not having to listen to any of this, anymore, ...

The problem is that you appear to see things in black-and-white terms, rather than recognising shades of grey all the way along the spectrum. In other words, this post in another of your threads regarding the "package mentality" would be good for you to take on board. I will quote it here:

This has been an interesting thread to read. I see some indication of the spectrum of opinion that is illustrated in various media: From those who think
that seeing a Psychiatrist for medication is almost always the answer; to those who think that 'talk therapy' may be used as treatment in addition to medication;
to those who think that talk therapy is preferable in most cases to meds; to those who distrust meds in all cases; to those who think that talk and pharmacology
are alike useless.

I think it is not useful to think of "anti-psychiatry" as a viewpoint, but rather as a position on a single issue; and further, one that can have different
roots. Thus, someone may be opposed to the degree to which psychoactive medication are used but not opposed to pharmaceutical treatment of psychological
conditions per se; and someone else may hold that "Psychiatrists are evil people who are obsessed with your sex-life and want you to be coming to see them
forever; and another may say, "There's nothing wrong with you that getting an honest JOB won't fix." These people don't hold the same viewpoint, they just
dislike the same treatment. (A parallel with atheism springs to mind, where the man who says, "Religion is just a tool of oppression" and one who says,
"I see no evidence of a god" are both termed atheists, but have very different views of the subject. What they do agree on is that there's no Big Bearded
Guy in the Sky.)

What most interests me, however, is seeing where what appear to be pretty rational posters suddenly respond to other posts with venom and, apparently,
with misunderstanding of what that post actually contained. It is as if the use of a particular phrase or reference immediately triggers an expectation
that a certain viewpoint or group of opinions must be held--and everything following is read within that context. That is, if someone says, "There are
studies showing that longterm use of Ritalin has severe side-effects in some patients" this is presumed to indicate that 1) The poster thinks medication
is inappropriate or ineffective in all cases; and/or 2) That ADHD is not a medical condition; and/or 3) That ADHD is frequenty misdiagnosed. Please observe
that NONE of items 1, 2, or 3 are implied by nor should be inferred from the quoted statement.

The content of the foregoing is not my point, only the behavior. I call it 'the package deal' and it is a problem I find in even this very reasonable group
of posters. I find it puzzling and a bit daunting to confront. The forum of a skeptical organization is the very last place we should find people misconstruing
others' statements. The misreading of others' posts (or mishearing of others' statements) is a bad habit if you are interested in understanding what their
position is; and knowing where someone is, is the first step to deciding if you agree or disagree with them.

Just my opinion, MK

It does seem rather irrational, or else disingenuous, for you to start a thread called What is the appeal of anti-psychiatry? when you don't really seem to want to know what the appeal is, and so will start condemning anyone who tries to explain it to you, as if they're actually trying to promote the views you dislike so much. Can't you understand that by starting a thread asking a question like that, it was inviting answers, that were not necessarily subscribing wholesale to the beliefs you dislike so much, but would be giving them an airing? If you don't want to hear about those ideas, don't start threads asking people to comment on them. If you don't see any value in anything that even approaches them in even fairly minor ways or even only in certain respects, don't expose yourself to them by implying you want opinions on the subject.

 

[Maia]

(snip, snip snipping the cut and paste)

If you have something to actually say, then say it instead of lifting the posts of others and reprinting them wholesale. If this person would like to come here and join the discussion, they would be more than welcome.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

(snip, snip snipping the cut and paste)

If you have something to actually say, then say it instead of lifting the posts of others and reprinting them wholesale. If this person would like to come here and join the discussion, they would be more than welcome.

They said it so much better than I would have, which was why I repeated it rather than expressing the sentiments in my own words. And you appear to have missed what I said at the end of the post. Your failure to listen seems to be yet more evidence of you not being willing to listen to constructive criticism and viewpoints that oppose yours. When several people comment on this trait you appear to have, can they all be wrong?

It's a great shame, because it means you're bound to deny viewpoints that you oppose in some respects as if they have nothing of any worth to teach you, when in fact oppositional views can contain valuable elements that can make people better at their jobs if they take them on board.

For instance, I once went to a day of lectures on schizophrenia by a psychologist who was schizophrenic himself. He'd discovered he could keep his symptoms under control by taking a very low dose of medication most of the time, and upping the dose temporarily when he felt a relapse coming on. The dose he generally took was much, much lower than that that would be prescribed by most psychiatrists. Yet he was functional and rational most of the time.

He described techniques of cognitive behavioural therapy that can help people with their schizophrenia symptoms, and talked about stresses in his life that he felt sure had contributed to his development of schizophrenia, and recounted how his symptoms had actually diminished when he went to live in a place where there were lots of eccentric people, so his behaviour fitted in with theirs better and he wasn't constantly stressing about being abnormal and pressured to be different. Of course, he was by no means saying that schizophrenics should simply be treated as eccentrics and their illness denied, but he was arguing that viewing schizophrenia in uncompromisingly negative terms could actually be detrimental to the well-being of patients.

He talked about what he felt most passionate about, that psychiatrists tend to dismiss entirely anything about schizophrenia that the sufferers deem positive, like any extra creativity any of them believe it bestows on them, and simply see them as broken people who need mending. Thus the views of sufferers are stifled, they are disempowered, and their entire experience is invalidated, rather than them being listened to and helped to cultivate elements of it that are genuinely positive while having the negative aspects treated. The man's called Peter Chadwick, and he wrote a book called Schizophrenia: The Positive Perspective: In Search of Dignity for Schizophrenic People.

He argues that the viewpoints of patients should be taken into account when researching recovery methods. From a "psychiatric bulletin" from the Royal College of Psychiatrists called First-person accounts of delusions:

... Most attributed their recovery to a combination of medication, psychotherapy, social support and personal coping strategies; some felt that their illness had enhanced their self-awareness or spirituality. ...

The use of first-person accounts of mental illness has disadvantages. Most importantly, the writers of such accounts are likely to be atypical of the general patient population in terms of demographic characteristics, personal qualities and their degree of recovery and insight. Such characteristics may lead these individuals to interpret their experiences in a different way. Despite these problems with subjective accounts of mental disorder, Chadwick (1997), a clinical psychologist who has described his own psychotic illness, argues strongly for learning more from patients' personal accounts, and highlights the individuality of patients' attributions for their illness and their perceived paths to recovery.

 

[Maia]

These posts are possible to respond to when there are no exclamation points and no sarcasm. I really appreciate this, because I've decided that it's just plain not worth responding to sarcasm. I wouldn't do it in face to face conversations-- I won't do it online. And I won't do it in my own posts either. If I ever do, I hope someone calls me on it, because I don't want to do it (although it's true-- it can be a bad habit that's hard to avoid.)

I'm really not sure what to say about things that are just not correct, so it's hard to respond to those. You can clearly see from the things I post that they are thoughtful responses to what other people have said, and if anything, I've been too likely in the past to bend over backwards to agree with everybody and not make waves. That, I just can't do anymore, or there's no point in taking part in a forum.

There are a lot of very good reasons to utilize specific types of evidence in order to bolster arguments, such as peer-reviewed articles, written by credentialed researchers, hosted at specific locations (such as PubMed.) Even empirical research has many, many opportunities to go wrong at many different stages in its application (as with the Vioxx mess). Do you see how far from the mark evidence can stray when the empirical method isn't followed as closely as possible? If we are making specific claims about the success or failure rate of a treatment modality, a medication, the best method of treatment for a disorder, etc., we have to use the best quality research we can find to back up our arguments. That's why the article you provided was an excellent piece of evidence for the idea that a combination of treatments help clients' perceived recovery from delusional experiences in the context of schizophrenia. (It does not provide evidence regarding objective recovery either way, but we'll get into that later on.)

If we're making a more wide-ranging argument, on the other hand, ( such as: "what are the proper magisteria for science and "religion"?"), we can bring in all different types of evidence. It may surprise you, but I agree 100% with Stephen Jay Gould on this one: there ARE two different magisteria, and this statement can be logically supported (considering SJG's definition of "religion". He was as least as much an atheist as, say, Richard Dawkins, although they didn't get along very well, so it's a little complicated.) However, I don't agree JUST because SJG said it, because that would be an appeal to authority fallacy; I have to bring in a lot of different types of evidence in order to support my opinion. Empirical evidence in the form of peer-reviewed articles from journals does indeed form a part of this support, but there's a lot more.

Schizophrenia is a more straightforward issue, and a lot of it is because we know that it does have a very high rate of heritability (around 50 percent. PTSD, by contrast, has zero heritability.) Peter Chadwick does seem to bring up a lot of interesting issues from what I can see (again, though, the problem is that I wasn't at that speech, and the link is to a book. Amazon doesn't let me read more than a couple of pages of the book, and I can't cut and paste from it here. This is great for Chadwick's general argument; for specific facts, it's not so great.) He mentions ethical concerns he has with genetic modifications of the heritable components of schizophrenia. Yes, these are theoretically important concerns to have; however, one can tell from even a couple of pages of the book that the arguments he uses to support these concerns have some real problems (for one thing, he's using sources from the 1960's, 1970's, and early 1980's!) He talks about the definition of schizophrenia and what it actually consists of, but when he mentions the deficit concept attitude of psychoanalytic practioners to the mentally ill, this just has nothing to do with virtually anything whatsoever which is occurring at the present time (in community mental health, social workers provide most of the treatment, there's one psychiatrist on staff, and then there's a nurse. There must be psychoanalysts in existence somewhere on the planet, but I have never seen or met one.) It's straw man criticism.

It's also not a good sign to see mania referred to as a distortion of a creative mood, because mischaracterizing a different mental illness (bipolar disorder) doesn't bode well for how the one at hand (schizophrenia) is going to be conceptualized. To state that he's looking for the positive "flowers" under the "rubble" of pathology does and can represent something positive in outlook-- I'm trained a social worker; we're all about the strength-based perspective-- but this just can't be at the expense of understanding what a biological mental illness really is. When Chadwick ranges off into talking about the "schizophrenic credit", very ill-defined "borderline states" (well, no borderline personality disorder doesn't have anything to do with this, except that it might very well be co-occurring, and then you'd have to deal with that too), and Jung, things start to become rather incoherent. And then... the word
synchronicity comes up on page 3, and Chadwick says that he's going to use it a lot in the book. (JoetheJuggler? Are you around? You may want to comment here...)

Anyway, here's the link.

I think that Chadwick does have the kernels of some very worthwhile ideas, but that they devolve into some incomprehensible things pretty fast. I don’t think it’s an accident that he does have a psychotic disorder himself, as quoted in the Stanton and David article. His own writing gets a whole lot more bizarre than the clear-headed statement that "viewpoints of patients should be taken into account when researching recovery methods," which is probably why Chadwick wasn't the one who actually did the research or writing (nor did that quote come from him). The authors of the article were Stanton and David, and this actually was a literature review of a series of ‘First Person Accounts’ about the onset, recovery and experience of delusions in patients with schizophrenia.This needs to be emphasized: this was not original research, not a study on medication or therapy; this was a literature review examining the subjects’ perceptions of their own experiences. Does this review have value? Yes, definitely. However, its limitations must be taken into account, and it truly needs to be re-emphasized that it does not provide objective information of any kind regarding the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of any type of treatment, whether medication or therapy-based, only persons’ subjective experiences of it.
However, any type of research published in a peer-reviewed journal is a big step up. There are important reasons to seek out, find, and cite these types of articles. We all need to work to improve our arguments, all the time, because they could always be better than they are.

APA format citation:

David, A., & Stanton, B.(2000.) First-person accounts of delusions. Psychiatric Bulletin, 24: 333-336

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Maia, you appear to have given up on some alternative to the assumption that many psychiatric problems have a neurological basis. What is the alternative that is annoying you?

~~ Paul

 

[Maia]

Maia, you appear to have given up on some alternative to the assumption that many psychiatric problems have a neurological basis. What is the alternative that is annoying you?

~~ Paul

Mmm... now, that's a very good question, and it does make me think about the answer. Some of it is that I've run into one too many people fulminating on and on about the evils of Ritalin, and then there was the person who told me that aluminum had been proven to cause Alzheimer's (everyone at the nursing home is just out of luck, I guess.) But another unpleasant truth is that the success rates of most therapeutic interventions are just not as good as they look in the short term. The reasons are complicated, but certainly there is and has to be a neurological basis of some kind to any mental illness or mental disorder. This isn't the same thing at all as saying that this explains everything about the disorder at hand, or that this is all we need to know, but it's a reality that must be faced.

I'm a social worker, and we're not trained to think this way, but we have to. Social workers provide most of the mental health delivery in America, and we have to educate ourselves here and think about what we can bring to the table. I think that this paradigm will help us to devise better treatments. There are many ways of empowering people; an absolutely necessary one is by getting them into neurological positions where they can better help themselves. I've worked with so many people in community mental health who are so beaten down and can't begin to imagine a way to find their way back up, and we've got to find more effective ways to help them than the therapeutic interventions we have. I've said a lot of nice things about CBT, for example, but the unpleasant truth is that the studies supporting it only look impressive if the followup is short. After two years, the success rate drops off catastrophically. Well, most people want to live longer than two years after treatment!

We have to find ways of bringing people up to the point where their brains physically work well enough for all types of treatments to be effective, and I think that the wave of the future will be psychological conditions with a strong neurological base. PTSD is such a great example, because the sad truth is that there is no effective evidence-based treatment for it which actually has been shown to work in the long run. Yes, the success rates look great if the followup is short; they are appallingly bad over longer periods of time, and most vets are coming back from war zones with PTSD (I've volunteered with Operation Standdown here.) Another enormous issue in the extremely near future will be the mental health needs of seniors with Alzheimer's dementia. Depression and anxiety rates are stunningly high (I see this every day in the work I'm doing now), and nobody is really dealing with the issue of those who've had longstanding mental illness and then begin to develop dementia as well.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Maia,

I have three experiences with these issues. First, my ex-wife is bipolar and, in particular, spent two months believing she was the second coming of Christ. Second, my mother died of Alzheimer's. Third, both of my children have severe learning disabilities.

We simply don't understand the brain well enough to deal with these things all that well, yet. Patience is needed, even in the face of loved ones with horrible problems. But I see no alternative to assuming these things are physical. Otherwise we embark on a road to madness, where we assume there are magical explanations but are completely without an approach to deal with them.

I have one other opinion, but it's easy for me to say: Psychiatric social workers should persevere for about a decade or so and then find another line of work. It's just too difficult to stick with it for any longer. (I'm sure there are exceptions.)

~~ Paul

 

[Baby Nemesis]

... and this actually was a literature review of a series of ‘First Person Accounts’ about the onset, recovery and experience of delusions in patients with schizophrenia.This needs to be emphasized: this was not original research, not a study on medication or therapy; this was a literature review examining the subjects’ perceptions of their own experiences. Does this review have value? Yes, definitely. However, its limitations must be taken into account, and it truly needs to be re-emphasized that it does not provide objective information of any kind regarding the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of any type of treatment, whether medication or therapy-based, only persons’ subjective experiences of it.

Naturally the opinions of the schizophrenics on what helped them recover shouldn't be taken to be so authoritative that treatments are built on them. They are, though, a valuable first step that can provide ideas for research avenues that might bear fruit. The opinions of patients on what helps them should always be valued and encouraged. It seems it would be wise to heed the views of people like this on patient input:

From a book called Tales of Solutions by the leading practitioner of solution-focused therapy Insoo Kim Berg:

During our long professional education and training it is emphasized that we are the experts at identifying, diagnosing, and treating problems--and we are. We do know a great deal about human behaviors and psychopathology, about what's wrong or why something isn't working. We soon come to believe that we are the irrefutable authority and hold ultimate responsibility for a desirable therapeutic outcome. Dejong and Berg (1998) describe this mindset and way of conducting ourselves as a "problem-solving" approach. Increasingly, both professionals and the public have become dissatisfied with this expert-driven approach, and there is a burgeoning movement to make therapy a client-driven endeavor. This new approach not only is pragmatic but also better fits with the general postmodern view that there is no ultimate truth or right way of doing things. SFBT is one of the first models to insist on taking on this "not-knowing" posture (Anderson & Goolishan, 1992), which recognizes that clients are experts on their own lives and know what will best fit their needs. It is also consistent with the assumption of respecting and accepting client values and beliefs. In clinical practice, this posture makes it possible for the therapist to ask questions rather than telling clients what to do, making pronouncements about what was the matter with their childhood, and telling them what they can do to undo or fix it. It sounds rather simple, but it is so counter to our training and natural compulsion to be helpful to anyone who suffers or is in pain that it is often difficult to put into practice.

Of course, that isn't saying that therapists would never know what's best for clients or that clients could never be wrong, or that the client should be able to determine their own treatment no matter what, or that the therapist should never take charge. It's simply arguing the case for empowering clients by giving them input into their therapy and valuing their opinions.

A similar view is put forward by the book Solution-Focused Therapy with Children by Matthew Selekman:

As part of the collaborative treatment planning process, treatment goals are negotiated into solvable terms, treatment modalities and an action plan are agreed upon, and a DSM-IV diagnosis is selected with the family's input. Like the four Buddhist mind-training principles discussed later in this chapter, the self-reflection part of the postassessment session serves as another helpful check to prevent us from becoming too wedded to any one way of thinking about the family, to maintain a curious and open stance, and to be critical of what we chose to do, avoided doing, or forgot to explore or do with the family in a session.
Prior to discussing the five major assessment areas of inquiry, I first discuss four Buddhist mind-training principles that can help therapists in gathering client background information and in listening to clients' problem stories. By listening to our clients with a "beginner's mind," therapists can avoid the common mental trap of trying to understand their clients' problem stories and family situations too quickly. ...

The bottom line is that our clients are better experts on their lives than we are. We have to give them plenty of space to share their stories to help us better understand their world views and difficulties. However, research indicates
that many therapists have a tendency to formulate their diagnostic impressions within the first 30 to 60 seconds of observing their clients in assessment interviews (Gauron & Dickson, 1969; Yager, 1977). Dawes (1994), in providing an explanation for how therapists arrive so quickly at diagnostic impressions and labels for their clients, argues: The heuristics that we use for assessing our clients: availability (searching in one's memory for cases similar to the one in front of us) and representativeness (matching cues or characteristics with a stereotype or a set of other characteristics associated with a category), most commonly lead to inaccurate case formulations, (p. 130)

 

[Dancing David]

I will never be a reductionist materialist about everything, and there's no use trying. But that's IT, I've HAD it; I really think I'll subscribe to that philosophy to at least some degree in ONE field, and that's psychiatry. I do not want to deal with ANY more nutty ideas about how indigo children shouldn't be taking Ritalin, or how ADHD brains just work differently and isn't that special, or how schizophrenia just means that you're seeing the world a little differently, or how post-traumatic stress syndrome is something that gee, vets should be able to just get over already...

(short foaming-at-the-mouth break.)

So, that's IT. My basis for not having to listen to any of this, anymore, is the intersection of psychiatry, psychology, and neurology,which represents by far the most interesting and exciting areas of research today. No, I'm not going to turn into a reductionist materialist about everything even in this area, but mental illness/disorders have a NEUROLOGICAL and neurobiological BASIS. No, that is not ALL they have, but that is the part which it makes the most sense to study right now, the most valuable and fruitful area, and since denying it always seems to lead to all of these weird New-Agey let's-deny-reality theories, well, that's it for me.

ETA:Oh, yeah-- why is this not in science/med/tech or something? Because it's my personal philosophy, that's why (with wild-eyed look)! Arrived at after much having-had-it-ness.

Good wishes and positive energy!

Been there.

 

[Dancing David]

I have one other opinion, but it's easy for me to say: Psychiatric social workers should persevere for about a decade or so and then find another line of work. It's just too difficult to stick with it for any longer. (I'm sure there are exceptions.)

~~ Paul

It is great work and actually I found the three year burn out takes care of it. After year three things just get better.(Or you do something else) I did social work for 15 years, i just happened to not always get along with my supervisors. I miss the work but gee, I am on a lower dose of zoloft. The hardest was the DV work, by far. Even over crisis intervention.

But being a computer teacher's aide is very relaxing by comparison.

 

[Maia]

(hugs Paul C.A.)

Wow, DD! I didn't know you were a social worker in a previous life. I truly want to be able to get back into psych social work specifically; OTOH, working with Alzheimer's patients is an amazing experience. And then there are the needs of the families of the terminally ill...