What is your experience

[hopeworks]

What is your experience with the mental health system???  What has helped////  What has hurt////

[Marina Tonkonogy]

Hello,

Just joined the group. I am not familiar with this new Google+ feature yet, so I'll introduce myself very briefly for now. I am a mental health professional and a former psychotherapy client and my experience with the mental health system, both as its consumer and provider, was mixed. I talk about it in detail on my website www.therapyconsumerguide.com. I'll share more as the discussion goes further. I just need to get familiar with how this works first.

Marina

[hopeworks]

This is Larry. I have worked in the mental health system for about 35
years in a variety of positions. On the other hand I have been a
mental health consumer reallly all my life. Most of my early
experience was with kids and families. Over the last years my
experience has primarily been as a consumer and an advocate. I have
known many gifted and committed people who work in the role of
providers. At the same time I have seen a system that way too often
hurts the people it is supposed to help. Linda and I started a
support group about 7 years ago and the website shortly after that.
Tennessee has something called the Consumer Advisory Board that is
supposed to represent the consumer (its a Tennessee term I know many
people dont like it) voice to the dept of mental health. I have been
chairman of that board for about 4 years. Through the website I have
met people from all over the country and indeed the world and learned
more than I have ever learned. I am very afraid of the direction of
the mental health system after the Newtown tragedy. I hope this group
really becomes a conversation among people with shared issues and
experience that might prove helpful to all of us. Please share this
group with others. And please feel free to introduce any topics you
might like to or that you feel important. We will learn more from
each other than any other way. Again thanks.

[Moss Bliss]

I'm in the process of moving or I would have said more by now. Probably will be getting into it in a week or two. New home, new love, new spiritual group, new opportunities -- NEW HOPE!

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ज़ैवलानन्ड
Gerald L. "Moss" Bliss, D.D.
Certified Peer Support Specialist
"I got skills, I got mad skills..."
சிவாய நமஹ

[David Steingart]

Hi, my name is David, visit this site quite a bit, it is empowering to connect with people who have similar views as my own. As much as the medical model is hopefully on the way out, I hope that people realize that it has value - it isn't that the model is necessarily bad, it's the way it is used, to focus only on diagnosis and medication. Medication can help people if it is used correctly. If the person prescribing it is listening, really listening...

David Steingart- LSW
"People who say it can not be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
- George Bernard Shaw

[Moss Bliss]

David, the medical model right now is, diagnose it and drug it. No listening to the patient, except to change pills. That is not a medical model -- doctors in other specialties make sure their treatments work before they buy into them.  When psychiatrists decide that they want to be real doctors, not just pill pushers, then we can apply medical models.

[David Steingart]

Moss, I hear your position. I have worked with dozens of psychiatrists as a social worker and others as a consumer. Yes, by and large they are not listening and mostly prescribing. But my point is that medications can help a person! It's easy to forget this in the criticism of the medical model. If used tentatively, with care and with attentive  listening, meds can be an amazing tool. The problem is the prescribers not the pills themselves.

Daivd

[Moss Bliss]

David, the problem is both the pills and the prescribers. According to studies, only 30% of patients are helped by the pills, and nobody knows why and nobody is doing research to find out why. They would rather ignore the issue and believe marketing materials from the drug companies about what wonder drugs they all are. Studies HAVE been done showing, for instance, all antidepressants are no better than placebo when you review ALL the information, not just the studies cherry-picked by the drug companies, and for this lack of treatment the patient also gets powerful "side" effects.

I'm not against drug treatment -- when science, not marketing, drives the approval process. At present, this is not even partially the case.  And if drugs help you, I support your choice. But we do not have the whole story, and so informed consent CANNOT be given.

Hugs,

Moss

[LInda Drain]

I feel there are far too many prescribers who are quick to medicate without good reason. Sadly, there is a regrettable amount of patients who are medicated who don't need it at all.They are victims of practioners who have their favorite meds or maybe they even get kickbacks for using them. Then there are others that are not medicated safely and end up hurting themselves even more. I personally walked away from psychiatric care 4 years ago bc the doctor was over-medicating me with a drug that caused horrible side effects. When I told him about the problem he just wanted to increase the medicine even more. I have not been under the care of this doctor since and  I am much better off.

  The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God my rock in whom I take refuge.(2Sam22:2)

[Moss Bliss]

Linda, I can't tell you how many times I have heard that story, including my own case. I am NOT anti-psychiatry or anti-drug, but I am totally against the way the APA has sold out to the drug companies and 99% of psychiatrists no longer do any therapy other than drugs. This means they have renounced their status as doctors, as they are not interested in healing but only in dispensing drugs.

Hugs,

Moss