You go on my permanent record! No guns for you!
Posted on 02/23/2013 10:54:26 AM PST by Drew68
THE grieving process is in danger of being branded a medical condition if a mourner feels sad for more than two weeks and consults a GP, according to an international authority on death and dying.
At present, mourners can feel sad for two months before being told they have a mental disorder, says Professor Dale Larson. Decades ago, a diagnosis could be made after a year.
In a keynote address at an Australian Psychological Society conference in Melbourne on Saturday, Prof Larson will express his anger about the American Psychiatric Association's new diagnostic manual, DSM 5, which is used in many countries including Australia and New Zealand.
The manual, to be published in May, allows a diagnosis of depression after two weeks of grieving.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
“As others have pointed out the amount of “disorders” and the “treatment time” seem to line up ALMOST PERFECTLY with the available insurance.”
Never heard of that in the real world. Lots of urban legend about it, but never in practice. The fact is diagnosis do exist but insurance says not to treat so the professionals must let the person go, unless you somehow think people should work for free.
You go on my permanent record! No guns for you!
You lost someone close to you, you grieve, you pray, you talk to your clergyman, you turn on your computer to read some anonymous fool tell you that you are an “idiot”, “stupid”, and that you oughta call a shrink and load up on Prozac. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Do all that and also seek psychiatric help if you've got functional problems, intolerable dysthymia, and certainly if one experiences suicidal ideation.
The priest, religion and prayer will rarely do the trick on their own (and I'm a devout Catholic), as suffering is often part of the cross we bear. Use the suffering, within reason, to get closer to God.
Been there, done all that.
And being a malignant narcissist he's totally incapable of any feelings of empathy towards other human beings, so the concept of "grief" is foreign to him. He can make rules for the ants below his shoes with no compunction because he doesn't relate to them.
Most psychs went into that field to self-diagnose. Unfortunately that often results in them projecting themselves onto others who do not share their warped view of things.
I remember having a conversation with a young woman whose husband's mother had recently died. He went to a psychiatrist because he was feeling "sad", and he was given anti-depressants to help him. I recall thinking that, aren't you supposed to be sad when one of your parents die?
Seconded.
Thought you might want to take a look at this one, Mr. Robinson.
There were 66 comments here so I read those before posting. I was a professional counselor/psychological examiner for over 20 yrs. and had a private practice. I was a conservative then, too. I also did grief counseling.
The reason for any diagnosis is this: If a person cannot control his/her own life well enough to carry on his/her usual life, a diagnosis is usually called for to determine why this is happening - but this variant behavior must persist for a length of time to give a diagnosis. Just because the DSM V we use, gives a directive as to length of time for a diagnosis, I wouldn’t have to use that time if I thought it was too short for a patient – remember every patient is different and a cookie cutter diagnosis does not exist if the evaluator has reason to differ with the length of time stated or any other reason that would adjust that diagnosis.
As long as a person can make decisions and carry on his/her life, there is no reason for a diagnosis of anything.
Concerning the grief process: The same applies with grief. As long as the person can make decisions and carry on his/her life, there is no diagnosis pertaining to grief. Now, consider, a person stays in bed for a year because the husband died. That situation could call for a diagnosis but only if that diagnosis was required for some valid reason.
A diagnosis is not a diagnosis until it is on paper (considering a computer as paper these days). In other words, I might think in my mind the patient qualifies for a certain diagnosis but until I record that, it doesn’t exist. If I had no reason to record it, I didn’t. Also, once notes about a patient are made, they are subject to be taken to court if for some reason the patient is in court. I didn’t record notes unless the sessions were paid for by another entity, like Texas Rehabilitation or Social Security. I had the ability to remember from one session to another, the last sentence the patient said in counseling the week before and we picked up there. I protected my patient’s confidentiality that way; if I had no notes there was nothing to take to court. If I had made a recorded diagnosis, I had better be able to defend that diagnosis in court.
If a private patient came in for grief counseling, I wouldn’t immediately write down a diagnosis - that would be ridiculous. Each person deals with grief in his/her own way. One can’t put a time limit on grief as going through the process changes as time goes by and that is individual for every person. In my opinion, it is new experiences that help dull the pain of grief and eventually there are enough new experiences that the patient thinks of those intermittently with the grief – it’s not constant grief as it was and as more time and experiences happen, the time spent on grief is less and less.
The grief is gradually put in a box in the brain and the person’s life goes on. However, all the person has to do is think of what’s in that box, and the grief comes back for a time. I have gone through a number of family deaths, my husband’s the latest, and those boxes are there. When I think of one of those boxes, I still cry. We would be inhuman if those memories weren’t there. I can’t cry for long as my Yorkie insists on licking the tears and that gets messy.
So, Freepers, all psychologists and counselors are not suspect to be as most of you think. Note I left out psychiatrists. A story: a counselor worked for a psychiatrist. This counselor came to me one day and asked how I “cured” people because the psychiatrist had a patient she was seeing and the patient’s insurance was almost out and she wanted this person to get better before that happened. She had noticed my patients did not come to me for years, mainly a few months at most. I told her my counseling methods to help people “cure” themselves. In my mind, I was thinking it was a terrible thing the psychiatrist was doing – writing prescriptions and keeping the patient until the insurance ran out. My method was, get the patient able to handle his/her life without me and get out of my office as fast as possible.
I hope this helps you better understand how diagnoses are made, why they are made, and maybe you can feel better about some of us. There are even psychiatrists who care about their patients – I just wasn’t around any in my work – the ones I dealt with were insurance money freaks.
Posting drunk again? Maybe DU is missing a DUmmy?
Well... STOP IT.. then.. you can do better than that..
I had a stroke on Jan11 this year and while in the hospital
the doctors determined that I was depressed. I probably was, but it is only temporry, as I felt that I waas in jail
nice but jail none the less. I’m out now and getting along ok. cn’t drive but walk ok znd cook nd clean just fine.
I sure would like to have one on those walk in tubs now.
That’s my only problem. and now having been labeled depressed.
Yes. See, seeking counsel of a priest, having faith in God (praying), and not getting yourself medicated into a stupor are VALID ways to deal with grief, which is what the OP is about. You however apparently consider that to make someone a complete nutcase.
Ya might want to read Mr. Robinson’s many postings about what this place is based upon before digging your hole further.
They messed up my mom, real good, which affected the whole family. I am highly skeptical of the whole profession. They just keep prescribing more and more drugs and they are addictive and dangerous.
Great post! Very informative and well stated!
“You would have to be crazy to go to a psychiatrist.”
People who go to psychiatrists don’t recognize a joke when they read it. It’s one of the symptoms of being nuts.
.. shall NOT be infringed.
Very true indeed and I would encourage those truly needing a psychiatrists to see one or a Neurologist. I would also encourage a person having difficulty with the loss of someone to see a good Therapist instead.
Psychiatrists as such will do the person with such an issue as this no good. In my experiences I have also found that psychiatrists I knew were some of the most screwed up in the head persons I ever met in my life. I'm not kidding.
My cousin died and her mom went on just fine but my cousin had been ill with cancer for a long time and that probably prepares one for the eventuality but for these wackos to declare that everyone should be past the grieving stage in two weeks shows just how far out of touch they are with reality.
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