/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5745373]

Is psychiatry legitimate?

I'm seeing a shrink today for the first time in years after a childhood full of bad experiences. All the shrinks my parents made me see were full of pseudoscience religious mumbly jumbly.

I want help but I don't know if I'm doing the right thing by seeing a psychiatrist. Google says he's a good doc, and I was referred by my regular doctor.

[Anonymous No.5745387]

What are you gonna talk about? Do you want psychotherapy? Do you want meds?

[Anonymous No.5745396]

>>5745387

I filled out about 20 forms he gave me. I don't know what I'm going to talk about or what I expect. I just want to be happy.

[Anonymous No.5745437]

>>5745396
Psychiatrist is not going to do practically nothing useful, he is just going to give you SSRI(selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) aka fluoxetine(prozac),sertraline(zoloft),paroxetil(paxil),etc.

If he use psychoterapy, he is using pseudoscience.

Just go and get your medicines, or stop bitching about it, and it will go away.

I suffer from clinical depression with psychosis, is not only feeling bad depression, it also comes with hallucinations and delusions.

And by experience, drugs dont help much, they make you feel more bad, there is a lot of people in worse situations than yourse, and they dont bitch about it.

Be happy, just think of this, you know the actual odds of you existing, if you are here in the science board, do the math, how many Spermatozoon you had to beat to exist?, be happy you are wonderful.

>mfw people bitching about depression.

[Anonymous No.5745449]

Psychiatry os legitimate, especially if you have seen some of the patients that are desperately in need of help.

It just happens that psychiatry is still working out a lot of issues of how it goes about certain diagnosis, how to determine what drugs are/aren't effective, how to differentiate certain disorders.

It sounds like you were given a "precision" psychiatric evaluation, which just means you were asked a bunch of shit to rule out whether or not you had delusions, schizophrenia, etc. instead of the doc just talking to you.

The next frontier is looking at genotype, and the various changes that can have on the brain/its chemisty that causes all the various symptoms to disorders and offer solutions accordingly.

[Anonymous No.5745458]

>>5745437
Some people really don't respond well to drugs so at that point legitimate science like cognitive behavior therapy (something like anon mentioned) might also be employed. Psychotherapy is a small subset of psychiatry.

When all else fails, change your diet, exercise more, and get second opinions/other docs that are willing to offer something else/more effective for you.

[Anonymous No.5745463]

>>5745437

Wow haven't heard that before. I should just get over my debilitating sadness I've had most of my life with no help because people have it worse than me. I should just stop wanting to kill myself after decades of feeling like a piece of shit because there's someone who just got fired from their job. Maybe that person who was fired from their job should just suck it up because there's homeless people. Maybe homeless people should dance on rainbows and piss sunshine because there's starving kids in africa. Go fuck yourself.

I didn't think I was bitching, I just wanted to know if I'm wasting my time. And it's more than just depression. I have nightmares almost every night that wake me up. I have episodes where nothing is clean no matter how hard I clean it and I shower until I rub my skin off. And that's just the tip of the ice berg. I'm not going to use this as my fucking diary though so I'll leave it at that.

I'm not just some angsty adolescent. I'm dropping real money on this because I actually need help. I'm pretty sure my doc wouldn't refer me if I was just feeling sad.

[Anonymous No.5745470]

>>5745449

Thanks, this is the kind of answer I was looking for. I'm really hoping this doctor follows a scientific path, instead of my child psychiatrist who told me I would just be happy if I just dressed and acted like all the cool kids so they would accept me.

[Anonymous No.5745508]

>>5745437
Not all situations are the same you know...

Even people in "worse off" situations, might still be in situations that are easier to cope with.
For example, someone going through a lot of difficult shit in their life but still have tons of people in their life to talk to about it and sympathize might claim to be "depressed" but it's waaaaaaaaaaay easier for them to cope with it than someone who has nothing particularly bad happening to them but literally not a soul in the world to talk to.

Society would probably say the first guy has more to be depressed about and the second guy should "stop bitching".
Yet I bet if we performed this experiment over and over you'd see that the second guy commits suicide far more often than the first.

[Anonymous No.5745548]

>>5745463
Im not saying depression is not debilitating, im not depressed right now, but i know how it feels, my condition is chronic, is going to be for my entire life, and the sad part, is some people get a depression attack in their life, and no more.

I have had two attacks of psychotic depression, and like 5 attacks of only depression, the prognosis of depression is about 2-4 months top, mine last maximum 1.5-2 months.

And i only took drugs, one time, and they put me into zombie state, gave me severe dystonia, akathisia and induced drug parkinson, i couldnt pee in like 3-4 days, but my urethra hurted like hell, i could sleep, i had more hallucinations than when i was withouth drugs, they even added hipnagogic hallucinations, they took all my apetite, and i didnt eat in like almost a week, until my colon almost failed, and i was forced to eat using injections.

Those 3 months taking medicines, were the worts in my life, so if you think, it overcomes the contras, take medicine, otherwise take my advice and dont use it, i recommend you a high vitamin D diet, and taking melatonine, this will rise naturally your serotonin levels, i havent had a depression attack in 2 years, and i feel great, and i was that guy, who every time at 11 pm of night sit in his bed before going to bed, and think in infinite ways to kill himself until 5 am, that same guy that sometimes was near to commit suicide but thought he was a wonderful person.

Im not saying you cant bitch about it, but you have to decide, wheter is going to control your life or is not.

>>5745508
I have high functioning autism,OCD,ADHD and psychotic depression.

And every time im feeling a little bad, i just go to the geriatric,psychiatric,homeless house.

And seeing those people suffering in ways i cant even imagine, make me feel good about seeing them overcoming things better than me despite being in worse conditions.

Apologize my english, not main language.

[Anonymous No.5745573]

>>5745548

My mom tried melatonin, vitamin d, sun lamp, and a bunch of other stuff on me. It didn't help.
Not all situations are the same.
Seeing sad people just makes me sadder because I know I'm sad for no reason and I can't help it. I can't make those people happier either and it makes me feel worse. I'm glad you found something that works for you, but you can't expect it to work for everyone and be so rude about it either.

[Anonymous No.5745598]

>>5745573
Yeah, i hate that too, my depression has not reason, and i hate that.

I see people not being sad because some relative died, and i dont have reason to feel depressed, but fuck, i feel like shit.

Sorry it didnt helped, if you are going to take antidepressant.

Avoid, zolof,prozac,paxil.

I have heard that cimbalta,celexa are the ones with less side effects.

The other ones, give you nasty brain zaps and other shitty side effects.

[Anonymous No.5745602]

>>5745598

I was on effexor when I was a kid so I know what you mean about meds. If my doctor suggests meds, I will still try them but be cautious. I live with someone close to me so I trust them to tell me if my behaviour is off.

[Anonymous No.5745616]

It's legitimate in the sense that it's the best science can do so far.

Give neuroscience another 30 years and things will be much better. In the meantime, take what they tell you with a small grain of salt, and take the damn pills.

[Anonymous No.5747736]

It's able to produce results.

[Anonymous No.5747744]

If it's a psychiatrist he will prescribe you medications. Most of these are much more effective for severe depression than mild depression/dysthemia. Keep this in mind.

If you go to a therapist there will use psychotherapy. There are too major forms, psychoanalysis (run far away), and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (very useful). Psychiatric medication and CBT combined have the highest rates of remission compared to either method alone.

[Anonymous No.5747751]

>>5745598

Antidepresssants like SSRIs and SNRIs affect different people in different ways due to varying biochemistry. One medication that might give someone plenty of side effects might not have any side effects for someone else. I know someone whose on Sertraline (Zoloft) and it's helped them immensely with almost no side effects. I also know someone whose had a terrible time with the same medication. There are some liver enzyme/genetic tests that can determine with some degree of accuracy how an individual will respond to certain psychiatric medications but for the moment it's still mostly a crap shoot.

[Anonymous No.5748055]

I actually have a question about psychiatry too.

Do that mental disorders actually exist?

Is autism, ADHD, depression or anything like it a real objective thing or did they just invent it because they had to draw the line between normal and not normal somewhere?

[Anonymous No.5748056]

I actually have a question about psychiatry too.

Do mental disorders actually exist?

Is autism, ADHD, depression or anything like it a real objective thing or did they just invent it because they had to draw the line between normal and not normal somewhere?

[Anonymous No.5748107]

>>5748056
>Anonymous 05/10/13(Fri)09:08 No.5748056

there's measurable differences in people diagnosed with these disabilities, but it's considered more of a sympton than an actual disease