Posted by Hugh on January 20, 2022, at 13:18:03
In reply to You would think by now, posted by denise1904 on January 19, 2022, at 9:51:15
Daniel Amen quote:
Over the past decade I have argued with many of my colleagues about the need to look at and evaluate the brain in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who rarely look at the organ they treat. In my opinion, the lack of brain imaging has kept psychiatry behind medicine's other specialties, decreasing our effectiveness with patients and helping to maintain stigma and noncompliance with needed treatment. Odds are if you are having serious problems with your feelings (depression or anxiety), thoughts (schizophrenia or bipolar disorder), or behavior (violence, pedophilia, or substance abuse), the psychiatrist treating you will never order a brain scan. He will prescribe psychotherapy or powerful medications without ever looking at how your specific brain works. He will not know which areas of your brain work well, which work too hard, or which do not work hard enough. Can you imagine the outcry if other medical specialists acted without looking? If orthopedists set broken bones without X rays? If cardiologists diagnosed coronary-artery blockages without angiograms or fast CAT scans? If internists diagnosed pneumonia without ordering chest X rays or sputum cultures? Or surgeons performed mastectomies without looking at breast tumors under the microscope to see if they were cancerous or not? Yet, the state of the art in psychiatry is not to look at the organ it treats.
Psychiatrists diagnose and treat patients based on symptom clusters, not underling brain dysfunction. Imagine taking your car to the mechanic because it is smoking, using too much gasoline, or stalling in the middle of intersections. The mechanic listens to the symptoms and decides to change the car's fuel pump, without ever looking under the hood. How would you feel? Probably like going somewhere else. It's silly. We must look at the brain if we are to really understand the problems we face.
poster:Hugh
thread:1118213
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20211102/msgs/1118246.html