Is Everyone's Experience of Mental illness the Same?

When I was in high school, one of my friends got mono -- infectious mononeucleosis or kissing disease.  He had a minor sore throat and, because his girlfriend was quite sick with mono, he went to the doctor and was tested.  He tested positive, but unlike his girlfriend, he never got sick and said, "Well, I haven't tried to run a mile, but I'm pretty sure I could."  Still, there is no doubt that both young people had been infected with the virus and one got sick while one did not.One of the things I learned from the extensive research we did for our forthcoming book, Committed: The Battle Over Involuntary Psychiatric Care is that not every has the same experience of the same illness or the same treatments.  Okay, I didn't have to write a book to tell you that, I see it in my office every single day with every single patient.  Why does one person get a severe tremor to Wellbutrin while another with similar symptoms just gets better with no side effects? Why do some people need psychotherapy while others get better from a pill?  Clearly psychotropic medications don't agree with some people, and clearly they don't make everyone with psychiatric illness all better, but there is a contingency of people who feel that since medications were for bad for them, they are bad for everyone.  They are wrong. I wrote a blog post about a NY Times op-ed piece last week called "Medicating a Prophet" by Penn psychiatrist Irene Hurford.  She ...

Source: Shrink Rap - October 8, 2016 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Dinah Source Type: blogs