Mental Health and discrimination

[Clodfobble]

Possibly because the doctor doubts the diagnostic assessment that lead to the prescription in the first place... As one example, I take an anti-seizure med that has been, in recent years, rampantly prescribed off-label for depression. The last two times I went to the hospital, there were multiple times where I would give my current medications and various assistants or doctors would say, "...for depression?" When I said, "No, for partial temporal lobe seizures," they would look surprised.

Meanwhile, many years ago when I was first trying to get the seizures diagnosed, I had a doctor tell me they were just run-of-the-mill panic attacks and try to brush me off with a quick prescription for Xanax. I told him I wasn't going to take it because I knew that's not what was going on, and he made me take the paper anyway, "because you might change your mind." Psych meds are so common now that many doctors assume they've been wrongly over-prescribed until proven otherwise. Scorn is a doctor's natural demeanor.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Scorn is a doctor's natural demeanor.

I suppose I'll die with a scornful look on my face, then.

Yes, bipolar meds make things more complicated. However, it's been my experience, having raised children with mental health disorders, that nurses are more prone to labeling and stigmatizing.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

I suppose I'll die with a scornful look on my face, then.

Yes, bipolar meds make things more complicated. However, it's been my experience, having raised children with mental health disorders, that nurses are more prone to labeling and stigmatizing.

It helps to give people insight into the fundamental difference between the way doctors and nurses think. A nurse deals mostly with the science of medicine. Every time a nurse learns something new, a nurse thinks that's one less thing they don't know and that they're one step closer to being the consummate nurse. A ramification of that is they can believe they know best how to categorize and deal with patients. A doctor deals with the science of medicine and additionally with the art of medicine to a greater degree than nurses. When a doctor learns something new, it opens the doctor's mind to two new questions the doctor hadn't considered before. Doctors are humbled by that experience despite their significant accomplishment in becoming doctors and it tempers their egos enough that they are less likely to develop tunnel vision regarding their patients. This difference between doctors and nurses is why the idea of nurses going to medical school has not been enthusiastically received. Nurses not only have to learn new things, they have to learn a new way to think.