"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Psychiatric Problems: An interview with the psychiatrist, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, and author of a book called Out of Its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis: A Call for Reform. He calls psychiatry the “god that failed”, which is an apt description. Too often these days, psychiatrists limit themselves to prescribing medication and leave the “talking cure” to psychologists. The psychiatric encounter is limited to “How are you feeling? Any thoughts of suicide? Sleeping OK? Tolerating your medicine? OK, here’s your refill,” and no connection between doctor and patient ever develops. Psychoanalysis isn’t the answer for everything. It may not even be the answer for most things, but psychiatrists are short-changing the mentally ill, and themselves, when they treat their patients as mere walking neurons to be manipulated psychopharmacologically. There is an important role for the psychiatrist in the life of the mentally ill. As Dr. Hobson says:
With the seriously ill patients, on the whole, they don't stop being mentally ill, but they can do well. They can do better because a doctor cares for them. And you can be clever with the medications, restrained about their use. Probably the most important thing you can do is to give them a sense of human place with you.
