this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
636 points (98.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27062 readers
1961 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

An effective therapist would develop a clear treatment plan with you that aims to meet objectively measurable goals within a certain time frame.

This is a great point and true for non-therapists as well. A good measure of whether or not someone helping you is providing you value is if you are progressively improving in measurable ways.

True for doctors, meds, physical therapists, coaches, you name it

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Part of the problem with this is no clear treatment plan works consistently for everybody. Insanity is as diverse as cancer, and even the DSM is used as a rough guess as to what is going on, based on what mix-and-match set of symptoms.

Each psych med takes a month to start, get stabilized and see if that's an improvement. If it doesn't work right (typical) then the options are to add another drug (and then more drugs to counter side-effects) and test it as a cocktail, or get the patient off the first drug (usually two weeks to get sober, during which they're symptomatic) and another month to start something new. I went through over a dozen SSRI combinations and for a while had to settle on a cocktail that wasn't terrible and was slightly less bad than going sober.

Then there's a matter that we often cannot escape the toxic situations we're in, whether we can't move out of a situation with contentious roommates or are working for a company with cruel middle management and scary toilets and stinks of insecticide. I'd think any physician might argue that someone with a lung condition should be moved out of the moldy house they live in, but when it comes to environments that are psychologically unhealthy, we're all expected to just deal.

And this informs my job in the psychiatric sector which is as a peer councilor. When patients are stressed out and their professionals aren't doing it for them, they come to me, and the first think I ask is are you safe? Most of the time, they are -- as with the rest of the US population -- in precarity, sometimes not even knowing where their next meal is coming from or if they'll have a place to live next week. But scary parents, scary roommates and scary bosses are also super common, and we're not really going to be able to treat or even manage the crazy when people are fearing for their survival.