And, in my personal experience as a mostly successfully treated bipolar patient, he can take his cognitive behavioral therapy as ultimate solution and shove it up his ass.
This infuriates me. CBT can often be helpful for those with "garden variety" depression (not to underestimate the suffering). Sometimes the depression remits and sometimes medication is also necessary. Patients are often able to go off the medication after some time.
I'm not even going into the discussion about so many people being diagnosed with depression. It may or may not be true. Personally, but unprofessionally,I think the American way of life is extraordinarily stressful and we might need a culture change.
What I am going to talk about is severe mental illness like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, and the good news is that we've come a long way, baby. These illnesses were an institutionalization sentence 50 or so years ago. Shock therapy was brutal, but one of the only treatments available.
Because of pharmaceutical advancements, these patients, for the first time in history are allowed to lead quasi-normal lives. Hardly anyone requires permanent hospitalization anymore.
Lest someone misunderstand how great a miracle is, let me give you my personal account of a psychiatric hospitalization. I, like most patients, was only hospitalized for a short stay (about a week) to find a combination of medications that would work for me.
The ward is locked. You may have personal clothes, but things like shoelaces and razorblades are only given to you after proving that you are not a danger to yourself. That means no shaving of your legs and armpits, ladies, or your face, gentlemen. (Oh, and if you arrived via the emergency room, they took your clothes, including your underwear, and gave you a heavy apron to wear.) If you earn it, you can go outside in an enclosed courtyard for fresh air twice a day. Someone physically checks on you every 15 minutes night and day. Any quiet time in your room is punctuated by a staff member popping in every 15 minutes saying, "checks!" You line up for your medication, take it with water in a little paper cup and show your mouth after you are done to make sure the pills went down. You do see a doctor daily. Lights are out when they say they are out. You get up when they say to get up. You can't lock the bathroom door. you just have to hope that other patients respect a closed door when you are showering. Maybe you have earned a razor and can shave your legs!
Everything is done for your safety, but it's all rather humiliating.I shudder to think that people with my diagnosis used to live out their lives in institutions. I was there a week, but I saw a doctor daily and we found a good combination of medication that started to work. They keep you safe and force you to get out of bed, to eat, to wash, to take your meds.
Then, you move to day hospital. You sleep at home, but drive back to the day hospital program for about 6 hours a day. You are educated about your illnesses, the types of medication you take, you do group therapy.
it's like a seminar that keeps you busy and educates you during the day. I was there for 5 weeks! All day, every weekday, over an hours' drive each way. You see the doctor less frequently to fine tune medication dosages, and you work with a social worker to plan community mental health care. You also learn to monitor your mental health and grade it daily on a 1 - 10 scale. Once your illness severity rates a 4 or less, you go home.
Once I went home, I saw an outpatient psychiatrist and a therapist. I started seeing the therapist 3 times a week, then twice a week for several weeks, then once a week, then once every two weeks, etc. until I was able to function in the community, again.
This is a best case scenario. It's very expensive and I was fortunate to have healthcare insurance so i could go to an excellent private hospital. The public hospital has a horrid reputation and some of the other patients had been there and had terrible tales to tell.
But, it's only through the miracle of modern psychiatric pharmaceuticals that leaving the hospital and living at home is even possible. A half century ago, and that hospital may have been my home.
So, I am livid at videos like this that misunderstand the types of treatment protocols that are considered best practices, and devalue the very drugs that are literally lifesavers and also allow those with serious mental illnesses to live relatively normal lives in the community.
Cancer treatments make your hair fall out and nearly kill you, but they can also allow you to beat the disease and live. Psychiatric medications can have awful side-effects and they can surely stress your liver, but they allow you to live with the disease in your community and function. How is that a bad thing?
Ill-informed opinions like this are infuriating. Psych meds are crude in many ways, like chemo, so we have to allow science to find better drugs. This type of video aids in reducing support for scientific research, whether public or private. He seemed to dislike both. I won't belabor the best source of funding here, but it has to go on. People's lives depend on it.