As someone who has been on been sides of this (worked in the mental health field and was also a patient at one point,) I would say that this article has a lot of merit.

This quote really stood out for me, as I saw it happen all too frequently.

That tale of the woman suffering from exhaustion and stress and being committed was very frightening.

Yes, it was, but it wouldn't be the first time I saw something such as that occur. Sometimes, the diagnosticians are so caught up in the symptoms themselves, and fitting them into a diagnosis, that they don't look at the big picture.

I guess I'm the only one who views this as a sensationalist piece.

I don't. I've read stories like this so often. Patients are dismissed as depressed or with other psychiatric issues because their cases are complicated and require more than the allotted 10 minutes to diagnose. Then once you've got that on your file, good luck getting anyone to take you seriously.

It takes, on the average, 11 years for a celiac to get a proper diagnosis because it's so much easier to tell someone their symptoms are a product of their mind... take these antidepressants.

I've been active on some forums where this isn't an uncommon story at all.

The single story itself may seem sensationalist, but the system as a whole certainly has its fair share of issues similar enough to it. In my experience on both ends of the system (worker and patient,) I really did see more of this sort of thing than should be.

It's not that there isn't a proper place for good psychiatric diagnoses and treatments. There are. But, I think that the person is the article who pointed out that the net has been cast too wide was right. Too much trying to fit people into a diagnosis.

Once a person has a psych diagnosis, unfortunately, there are a lot of repercussions, including that of other medical providers not taking physical complaints seriously enough. I have supraventricular tachycardia (SVT,) but a rather young, inexperienced family practitioner once told me it was probably just "panic attacks" after she saw that I'd previously been treated for depression. Well, no...I was first hospitalized for symptoms of SVT at age 10, and don't have a history of panic attacks. She didn't ask about history, nor did she ask much about the symptoms at all. Quite honestly, I could see someone with SVT who doesn't have any psych history being diagnosed with a psych illness instead of a proper diagnosis, because it's really easy to stick that psych label on someone and write the script for an SNRI (or whatever.) This is especially true if the patient is a woman.

I had a number of clients for whom I had to go to bat because real physical complaints were chalked up to being "all in his/her head."

I understand what you guys are saying, but since when did going to a doctor absolve you of the responsibility for how you are treated?

It doesn't, entirely. But, there are plenty of people (perhaps most?) who put a lot of faith in what their physicians say, and are, frankly, afraid of not taking the advice and prescriptions given to them. I'm not in that category, but I once was, so I can easily see how it happens. And, it can be very difficult to "fight" the system, especially for someone who is battling an illness, be it physical or psychiatric.

Exactly. Plus, as noted before. Once your doctor has decided, based on a 10 minute, rush visit, that your issue is a mental disorder, good luck getting anyone to take your symptoms seriously.

Please note the credentials of the person who wrote the opinion article. Someone within the psychiatric community is taking being critical, not some random joe-blow off the street.

Yes, I understand that, what I disagree with is information being skewed and squeezed to fit into sensationalist journalism. I'd rather be armed with the truth, whether that truth is that there is an epidemic of psychiatrists knowingly making false diagnoses, for some reason, or if the truth is more gray than that, or whatever else the truth may be. What I'm saying is that, when I read about the anecdotal story of the woman in the article, the alarm bells that went off in my head were saying; "There is something we are not being told here." I would bet money there is more to the story. And the tone of the piece sounded biased to me. Facts should be allowed to be facts, they shouldn't need this kind of journalistic embellishment. One's credentials do not make it alright for you to indulge in that.

Reading this story sounds all too real to me.

In my 34 years of nursing, I too frequently saw that once a patient had a psych history, all other illnesses are viewed through the "psych prism". The worst case was a woman (admittedly with a serious history of mental illness) who was admitted to the psych ward having been diagnosed with something like "hysterical transference". She complained that she was unable to feel her hands and feet. Turned out she was suffering from Guillain Barré Syndrome, eventually spending weeks in ICU on a ventilator. But she was only transferred out from the psych ward after the nurses there (who were convinced from the beginning that her symptoms were organic, not hysterical) physically wheeled her into a medical ward and said they refused to treat her now that she seemed to be having difficulty breathing. Caused quite a stir at the time!

Unfortunately psychiatric illness is still stigmatized by our community as a whole, so as I said, the reported story doesn't really surprise me.

The NY Times has also run a series of sensationalist ani-psychiatry pieces recently. I have experience in the field, and have come to feel that many of these articles feature someone with an axe to grind. The article discussed here seems to me quite biased.

Where shall we place the responsibility for psych diagnoses harming people's insurability? On the doctor, the illness, or the insurance industry?

Psychiatric diagnoses are "unregulated". What is that supposed to mean? Who regulates any diagnoses? We have professional training, professional standards, and licensure requirements to try to maintain quality in healthcare professionals. Do people ever fall short? Sure. But is negligence the rule? Hardly.

Is the DSM the psychiatric bible, used by naive practitioners? My professors taught differently. They taught us it is "The Reader's Digest of Psychiatry"

Don't believe everything you read. Doctors and patients deserve better.

Try this article: https://theconversation.edu.au/bad-...-messenger-6737

I think that the DSM is not to blame but doctors themselves, who, in my experience, often have very little in the way of critical thinking skills. They often have difficulties in seeing past the easy (often incorrect) diagnosis. They suffer with multiple prejudices which all too often affects their clinical judgement. They are mired in dogma and too many either do not look too closely or keep properly updated with advances in medicine and health science. Finally they are too enamoured with pharmaceuticals and the money that comes with them.

The problems that patients are facing now is not limited to the psychiatric field. Most doctors are guilty of these things in all fields, and in 20 years of being both a nurse and a patient, it is only getting worse.

Lee

Perhaps the fact it was published in the Opinion section of the newspaper tipped you off?

Well, they were someone who is an activist in that area and it was published in the Opinion section.

I personally think that psychiatry tends to be non-scientific and far too easy to distort and label people and that leads to over prescription of drugs they don't need and shut people out from real medical help they do need.

That's been my observation from other people I've talked to and it certainly is shared by many who don't have a financial stake in that particular field.