Posted by yxibow on February 27, 2005, at 17:00:44
In reply to Re: Why I Hate Neuroleptics and Forced Hosptialization, posted by willyee on February 24, 2005, at 22:29:11
> And professional evalutoion,im sick of hearing leave it to the professionals too,unless your a nurologist who is taking eeg scans of my brain,or an mri,or the like,then you are in no better situation than i,which is to search for documentation,they use a PDR,i use google,but hardly any thing scientififc goes on inside a p-docs office while prescriping.
Without leading to great argument; there is definately more that goes inside a psychiatrist's office, especially a psychopharmacologist's office. Granted every doctor's competency varies, but they've been trained to the intricacies of such things as the P450 system, to prevent giving you two medications that would play havoc with your liver, and have gone to medical school a few years more than the average patient who walks in their office.Now, I'm not saying informed consent isn't a good thing, I research just as much as I can see anyone else here does, and that's a good thing... there's nothing wrong with a balance of self-knowledge and doctor-mediated discovery. Of course if you read too much, you could get medical-student syndrome (the "I have everything in the book" disorder).
As for the field of neurology, EEGs, MRIs, PET scans are tools that can differentiate psychiatric biochemical imbalance diagnoses from those that are organic brain disorders like epilepsy; but PET scans are only so good at this point, they're not going to tell you what medication one should try f or a particular biochemical disorder. I only wish they were.
The level of visual discovery has not reached the neuronal point; so we rely on the hopefully good competency of a psychopharmacologist who can tease out the complexity of a disorder a patient may have, and through personal wisdom, continuing education, and peer review, attempt to help and provide advice at a level that we have reached in 2005.
May the future 50 years hold brighter days than the remarkable progress that the past 50 have, which began with the introduction of the first antidepressants, iproniazid, and imipramine.
poster:yxibow
thread:461854
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050227/msgs/464140.html