Mental Health professionals of Reddit, what is something that you wish more people understood about your field?

The mind is essentially unprovable and undetectable. It's very Descartes.

You're getting a diagnosis, but it's pretty much an educated guess based on hours of study, testing and interview. It's not unusual for the first and even second diagnosis by a qualified mental health professional to not be wholly accurate.

I've found some of the most accurate diagnosis have came from a client who's brought their past paperwork through two or more different professionals, so the third or fourth person has a chance to go back over everyone else's attempts alongside their own procedures, to nail down what was definitely wrong to finally narrow down what's most likely right.

I mean, it's probably not right anyways, because you're talking about mind here--it's very Descartes--which is an enigma: unseen and undetectable, so if you think philosophy is a hard science, hah hah, got news for you, buddy. It's very gray.

When you get to the psychiatrist, who is different than the psychologist (one does the interview, testing and diagnosis, and recommends treatment, typically; and the latter talks to you a little bit more before prescribing medication) he's going to try what he thinks might work best first. Anddd, then you come back later and it's either, "Hey, that's great, Doc!" and the psychiatrist nods and smiles, or, more likely, "This is fucking killing me!" and the psychiatrist looks all grave, tries to figure out why it's killing you, probably because the diagnosis is wrong or something, or the meds are applicable to the problem, but over or underprescribed, and then you essentially become a guinea pig, which isn't abnormal in psychiatric medication.

Even a really good psychiatrist can prescribe you something off a good, education guess, and nearly fucking kill you. It's not a hard science. He's taking an educated guess, too.

You can't hook mind up to a scanner and just go, "Oh, schizophrenia!" get a print-out with the required medication and dosage, and that's it.

They're going to take in the sum of everything they've learned about you and go, "Well, this seems likely to be schizophrenic (or more likely --affective or --typal) symptoms. Let's try treatment and you see the psychiatrist, and come back in a month, and we'll see how that goes."

/r/AskReddit Thread