Quantact Wrote:A person running around the street naked, hearing voices in his head or seeing hallucinations is sick. He's not to blame for it, but he's got a disease and he needs medicine.mmm...
However, you are within your rights to refuse medication, though that would be a horrible idea for a lot of reasons. If you are skeptical about your doctor's diagnosis, get a second opinion. And don't use your school/university psychiatrist; I've heard from a lot of people that schools hire second-rate doctors, and you can't have second-rate when it comes to substances altering your mind.
i don't know how true it is for mental illness --> i'm "sick" therefore i need "medicine"
your example: many psychotic people may not be at the extreme end of psychosis. haven't you ever thought you heard the phone ring, or heard the doorbell, but when you rushed out to check it wasn't there? or thought you heard someone call your name, but you look around and no one's there? i'm sure everyone has hallucinations sometimes
i think a more realistic conceptualisation is just that some people have it more severely or more frequently than others. like a continuum from neurotypical to [psychotic/autistic/schizophrenic/name of mental illness], and everyone fits on the scale somewhere.and depression? isn't everyone depressed once in a while? if you weren't depressed after your partner died, would that really represent mental health? and if after that we still conclude it's a disease, does that mean everyone has a disease (since everyone thinks about death if they're intelligent)? if there's a disease, cynics might say it's humanity...
good idea: get people medicated for their intractable humanity. if it solved it, that'd work lol
i guess my issue with medication also lies in the fact that if you give someone antipsychotics, does it actually do what it's supposed to? (the whole thing with overall improvement in quality of life... what's more fun, seeing a little girl running around that no one else does, or having your limbs shake uncontrollably?)
yeah, private psychiatrist. insanely expensive. medication? sure. problems with diagnosis though.
people are complex. i have friends who got misdiagnosed multiple times and kept finding different doctors til they got the diagnosis they knew they had. often no one knows more about yourself than you... and sometimes the best doctor is the one where you tell him what your diagnosis is.