Why are the mental patients smarter than their doctors? Why has no one explained this to the staff?

Two posSible reasons...

1) In one study researchers pretended to be schizophrenic in order to be admitted to a psych. hospital. After their admission, they acted normally. The staffs notes however, still indicated they were behaving as if they had schizophrenia. This si because they were labeled "schizophrenic" and the staff was only noting behavior that fir their view of what schizophrenics did. Only the other patients (who WERE schizophrenic) noticed the researchers didn't seem to be delusional!!!

2) Some people go into the psychological field of study/profession in search of answers for their own personal issues - either consciously or unconsciously. So if, as one person claims, they do have high suicide rates, it could be from their historical mental issues.

Just a couple ideas why you, or anyone, may see these doctors as quacks. It's a field of "medicine" with shades of gray but no black and white.

Any doctor is going to find it hard to see another doctor about a health problem and I think that applies here. As someone who has gone to doctors for depression I would have to say that they don't have a complete understanding of what the patients are going through. We all can say that we understand a problem when its on paper. When it comes to real life I would have to say that its a lot harder. You can't know something unless you have or are going through a process to understand it. I strongly believe that if you don't have depression than you can't fully understand it. You just don't have a complete view of how depression can affect someone. I would not say that doctors are dumb, or that the patients are smarter. I would say that there is a lack of understanding on both parts. The doctor has learned about the subject through school and effort, the patient through experience.

Having had a couple of spells in the old nut hatchery I feel quite qualified to speak on this subject. The old Goldwynism comes to mind: Anyone who goes to a shrink needs their head examined. Also the Hitchcock film Spellbound comes to mind. Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness. It's also the old one about men becoming gynecologists. Mental Health attracts people who think they are reasonable and sane, but a rational person knows we are all v. irrational. I am also reminded of a pop psychology/mumbo jumbo book I read years ago of how words contain hidden and sinister meanings. For example, if you break down the word Therapist and take away the The what have you got? BF Skinner could have had his own file in Quantico. Anna Freud (?) was certifiable with her theories of odd breast sizes affecting a child's development. Why can't shrinks live in mental hospitals for a while or go off their heads deliberately to understand tortured minds (Lang I suppose did this).

My grandfather used to say the definition of "crazy" was a person who looks around and says the entire world is insane except for them.

Seriously, though, I think psychiatric patients approach their doctors with a healthy dose of skepticism out of a desire to protect their most valuable organ: their brain. We only get one brain, and it's hard to entrust it to someone (doctor or not) who probably does not have our best interests at heart.

New info: I think that doctors are paid professionals. By treating us with talk therapy and meds, they are merely doing their jobs. They don't love us or care about us like close friends or family members. In that respect, they do not have our best interests at heart. They are trying to help us as patients, not as individual souls.

Also, my cousin is a pharmaceutical representative. She told me that doctors are paid/coerced into prescribing certain drugs over others and are rewarded when they do so. This fact makes me question whether or not a doctor's prescription is truly the best option, or whether they are trying to earn a trip to the French Riviera from Eli Lilly or Phizer.

Well, I think that the doctors tend to use their information they learned in school to apply to the situations their patients give them. What they don't do is that they try to treat them like they're talking to them without getting paid for it. They have that "therapist voice" that ticks me off or anyone who feels that they're not actually helping like they should. Like you said, probably not taking the situation to heart.

That doesn't make the patients smarter though, but the doctors aren't exactly smarter than the patients.

No doctors is fully understanding mental illness expecially for young doctors.........

I find out many errors and mistakes in the articals written by medical doctors.......

Medical doctors are try to help people with mental issels.

But some of the ordinarry people and the people in law enforcements are want to insult or even try to crash(harm) the people.

because in society it doesn't matter how smart you are if you dont have the paperwork to back it up. Common sense doesnt not count as a resume qualification.

no one is really smarter than anyone else..we all just know different things

'Cuz you can't tell college people nothing!