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Stephen H asked in HealthMental Health · 8 years ago

Why do many people seem scared of psychiatrists?

For instance If we're out and someone who doesn't know us very well says something and we say "why do you think that, then they immediately come back with "What are you, a psychiatrist or something?" and clam up. But we never contradict them and say "lacks insight" or anything like that at all, because we are gaining insight not refusing it and rejecting it and blaming everyone else, so it clearly isn't the case at all.

I have on a number of occasions clearly stated to all of the "decision makers" in a room (up to about 12 at a time) that I wouldn't force drugs into any of the other people abducted and trapped in the installation, and wouldn't force them into anyone on the outside or any of the staff, or going round the room one by one, any of them either.

And I'm supposed to be "paranoid" and "lacks insight" and "lacks decision making capacity" and yet I seem to be the only one around that isn't frightened, even of them, and has the same insight and benign decision for everyone all the way round, without caving in at all.

I've looked at things like Vipassana websites, and they have strange rules like "No people with a diagnosis of mental illness allowed", so they must be frightened of psychiatrists as well.

Psychiatry is only a concept like all other concepts with roles attached, so why are so many people so frightened of it?

I can change and flex concepts around any way I like, so it doesn't make any difference to me. But people seem to think that the concept of psychiatry is an insurmountable barrier packed with every fear imaginable to humanity. As if the concept matters is enshrined with a permanent and special significance that's more important than any and all people altogether. To me the people themselves are more important than the concepts that sometimes tend to get in the way of calm and positivity when they run wild in people's minds and get out of hand.

Quite often the same people who are frightened of psychiatrists fro themselves, when they have a problem themselves, are only too keen to blame it on someone else and get the mental health services involved to attempt to solve the problem vicariously and make themselves feel better about themselves when they already think they have all kinds of problems that they are running around attempting to fix and getting frustrated about at the time.

Double-binds into contradiction/self contradiction are easy, we can just undo them all the time, so I've been doing that since I started school anyway. But even the drugs don't make any difference, because we still recover in the ways that matter afterwards anyway, no matter how persistent in self-contradiction/contradiction and forcing harmful drugs the services are. And it clearly doesn't "help" them to resolve the double-binds into impossibility that they've trapped themselves in, because they just carry on and on doing it more and more, as if a gamble on the impossible would pay off sooner or later.

That kind of gamble won't pay off. So nothing to be scared of at all. We can just be calm and positive anyway, or change it back again to that afterwards if someone messes it up with harmful drugs. So no need to be scared. All it takes is maxed up "internal locus of control" and that's easy for anyone and everyone, and calm and positive as well, and highly in agreement with the results of all standardised benchmarked psychological tests that are supposed to be associated with psychological health, well-being, resilience, quality of life and success. (barring the combination of low emotional intelligence and image, power, status and control motivations, which for some unknown reason get associated with success as well in psychology circles, even though those are inconsistent with all the others, and generally result psychological damage and in causing havoc all around if people don't understand how that works).

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  • 8 years ago
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    There is a lot of prejudice about mental illness; I think the main reason is because mentally people are perceived as violent or dangerous in some way or another. The prejudice is reinforced by media i. e.;"former mental patient kills his father" but the news never says "man with diabetes kills three in a bank robbery." Movies also reinforced this stereotype; mentally ill people are often portrayed as murderers in the movies.

    In reality, only about 5% or less mentally ill people are any more violent than the average person. I just estimated that on my own, but it's based on working for the Missouri Dept. of Mental Health for almost 25 years. Very few of our clients ever did anything violent or harmful to anyone else.

    A lot of people will avoid getting mental health treatment even though it is needed, just because they are afraid of what people will think about them.

    My mother was a nurse, she would not let me see a psychiatrist or counselor. I didn't get treatment until I was an adult although I had problems since childhood. My mom said "psychiatrists are weird." In all fairness, the practice of psychiatry probably wasn't very good in the 60s and 70s. Psychiatrists used to ask a lot of strange questions about sex, dreams and so on. When I saw my first psychiatrist in 1983 there was nothing weird about it at all--I just talked about how I was feeling and he prescribed an antidepressant. It was just like going to any other doctor except there was no physical exam.

    Source(s): Worked in mental health from 1987 to 2013, treated for depression and anxiety since 1983
  • 8 years ago

    I'm not. I've only seen stuff like you described in the video games which is really cool, at least in the fantasy world. Manhunt 2, Silent Hill. Psychology is a very flexible concept, helpful in serving the individual needs.

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