Posted by mtdewcmu on November 23, 2009, at 0:33:55
In reply to pdocs: all too human » Girlnterrupted78, posted by PC_Load_Letter on November 22, 2009, at 23:57:25
> Glad to be able to help, though I'm sorry to hear that you have no other options right now. I shouldn't have assumed otherwise, and I hope things have improved since you last checked in. I'm in a similar position, actually.
>
> The trick, I think, is to voice one's disagreements with the judgments and/or decisions of one's pdoc in as dispassionate a way as possible. They are much more likely to dismiss out of hand the objections of an overtly angry patient (we might be "crazy", you know), even if the patient's anger is entirely rational and justified. They themselves may be the one acting in an irrational manner, but they are also the ones in a position of power (the power of the prescription pad - an unconstitutional monopoly, in my opinion), and they know it.
>
> It's a difficult and humiliating experience, being at the whim of a pdoc who is sometimes unable to avoid the temptation of arriving at a conveniently simple (though completely wrong and insulting) conclusion. Case in point: After describing my recent (admittedly unusual) very positive response to my very first dose of Lamictal, my pdoc's response was that it was a placebo effect. Very insulting. Studies indicate that the placebo effect is quite rare in people with TRD. I was actually expecting to feel extremely sick after taking my first dose of Lamictal, since that's exactly what happened when I tried it ten years earlier. But of course it was clearly a placebo effect. Sure. Whatever.
>They like to say that these psychiatric drugs take weeks to show any effect at all, but that is nonsense IME. There have been very few psych drugs that I have not felt some effect of, for better or for worse, on the very first day of treatment. I can generally get a pretty good picture of where things are going within a week, if not sooner. Lamictal had a distinct effect on me from the beginning. Prozac on day one was almost overwhelming. The problem with the pdocs is that most of them have never tried any of the drugs, so they don't really know what they're talking about.
poster:mtdewcmu
thread:923267
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20091117/msgs/926653.html