What is treatment?

[Earthcircle]

I posted this earlier, but it looks like I posted it to the wrong section of the forum.

I am nearly 48, and I can look back to a time when I believed that a person with SA could go into therapy for a few years and come out without SA. That seems very naive to me now. People with SA go into therapy, take meds, read self-help books, meditate, get hypnotized and -- surprise, surprise -- they still have SA. Before the internet, I was less certain of this. I thought maybe I was the only one who wasn't improving, but now I can see that people with SA pretty much stay that way no matter what.

My question: are psychotherapists, psychopharmacologists, counselors, and social workers just making money off of us?

 

[gustavofring]

I've definately come to a realisation that there is more to be found from within myself (my own strength and wisdom) and simple exposure and trying, then taking advice from professional help people with all their mantra's and techniques.

I had a big self-help period, in which I looked for spiritual mentors, self-help books and all that mumbo jumbo. While there are some good wisdoms in there, I just found I couldn't think for myself anymore and slowly lost myself in it. I can't learn how to live life from a book or video alone.

As for your question, I think it depends a lot on the severity of the SA, I think people here have a lot of various degrees. It's up to everyone individually. There are apparently people who have learned to manage their SA with the help of those things you mentioned, or even some who say they're cured. Some people might just grow out of it at one point and don't visit this forum anymore, others don't. I think different things work for different people. I'd say psychology and psychiatry is definately a lucrative business, and they do benefit from someone's mental health problems, but you can say that for any business really. The cemetary benefits from people's deaths. In the end people can choose for themselves wether they want help from mental health pro's or wether they will try and better themselves on their own or with help from friends and family.

 

[Earthcircle]

Cemeteries are not billed as treatments for death. Imagine if they were: "There is no cure for death. But there are effective treatments." That would be analogous to the mental health business. Frankly, I don't know what treatment-but-not-cure is supposed to mean. 100 years ago, psychoanalysis was actually billed as a cure. Now the mental health practitioners speak more cautiously, but they speak so cautiously I don't even know what they claim to be selling. I've bought tons of it in the course of my life, but I don't know what I bought.

 

[gustavofring]

True, maybe a cemetary wasn't the best analogy. Maybe hospitals, doctors, medicine etc. would be better to compare it with.

The human mind and the brain is a very complex thing. It's not like some physicall illness that doctors can visibly treat and cure. That's why it's a vague area and not everyone fits the same mold.

So you basically think psychologists and co. are snake oil salesmen who sell air and empty talk?

 

[Earthcircle]

Since you said "basically," then I would agree with the statement. I did, however, find Edna Foa's book "Stop Obsessing" to be helpful for my OCD. It helped dramatically and quickly, unlike most therapy where nothing ever happens and you're told to be patient.

What's really striking is that even CBT for depression, which is supposed to be empirically supported, is really roughly equivalent to placebo. SSRIs have been found to be placebos for all types of depression, except the most severe. Yes, a lot of it is basically snake oil. On the other hand, there is always something new coming out and *everything* sounds reasonable. I wonder what you think of this, for example: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/19/beat-depression-without-drugs].

 

[Earthcircle]

You have to erase the right bracket to get the URL to work.

 

[aNOTfox]

Took me a while to relise there was a difference between "treatment" and "cure".

 

[gustavofring]

Yeah there are always books that claim to be the ultimate cure or to offer revolutionary new insights. Many of them are just the same old wrapped in a new package.

Reading this article, I see good things, but nothing I didn't already know. A few years ago this book may have blown my mind though because I was totally unaware of what a healthy lifestyle was. I guess it's handy to have it all in one book, but I'm sure there's numerous books out there with exactly the same message. Even on this forum you can find this.

I think writers of these books aren't by nature scam-artists. They have just found what works for them, got over-enthusiastic about it and then feel they need to share it with the world (the $$ of course is also a motivation).

 

[Earthcircle]

Took me a while to relise there was a difference between "treatment" and "cure".

Psychoanalysis used to be "the talking cure." As the merry decades of the 20th century rolled by, people began to realize that not many people were being cured. One strategy was to re-classify certain conditions as normal states of being, if they proved resistant to psychoanalysis. Homosexuality is the classic example. (I am gay, so that's not a homophobic remark.) One also sometimes hears about how schizoid personality and Asperger syndrome are not really mental illnesses. If one could make any of these conditions go away, I suspect people would go back to calling them mental illnesses. (Frankly, even if one could cure homosexuality, I wouldn't want to be cured. It's too much fun.)

The other strategy was to stop using the word "cure," and start talking about treatments. The implication seemed to be "You will get somewhat better after a long, unspecified period of time." When the patient fails to improve even after, say, a decade, one then blames the patient. "It's your fault you didn't improve. You unconsciously want to fail." And speaking of homosexuality again, people who still consider it a mental illness also treat gay patients that way. When the gay patient fails to reach the snowy summit of non-gayness, the therapist says "It's your fault. You unconsciously want to be gay."

 

[mikebird]

I agree. The problems are personal.

Adjusting your own preferences towards others doesn't necessarily make life better.

A temporarily broken leg might affect SA for a while. Social status is all about the size of you house, where on the planet you live the value of your cars, the friends, the number of your offspring and how they are divided between partners. The grand scale of social status is simply how much time you spend on holiday, and who with

Treatment and therapy has been about epileptic episodes. These are about physical activity in the brain. Emerging from my own self-repair, as any scab does, I don't see it as a forever disability. Mentoring from psychologists doesn't work. I can't take that profession seriously. There is more to the world than words. I'd like to have a middleperson who trains karate to the psychologist & patient, and see who comes out best eventually

My attitude to humans doesn't suit everyone. I don't have a control panel for others to tweak as desired. This method might be useful for an employer, if I'm well appreciated and properly reimbursed.

 

[Earthcircle]

Recently, there has been some talk of mamentine reversing symptoms of Asperger syndrome. If that proves to be true, I bet you that people will shift gears in a New York minute: Asperger syndrome will once again be a mental illness.

 

[Earthcircle]

Memantine. Sorry for the misspelling.

 

[AndyHan]

I posted this earlier, but it looks like I posted it to the wrong section of the forum.

I am nearly 48, and I can look back to a time when I believed that a person with SA could go into therapy for a few years and come out without SA. That seems very naive to me now. People with SA go into therapy, take meds, read self-help books, meditate, get hypnotized and -- surprise, surprise -- they still have SA. Before the internet, I was less certain of this. I thought maybe I was the only one who wasn't improving, but now I can see that people with SA pretty much stay that way no matter what.

My question: are psychotherapists, psychopharmacologists, counselors, and social workers just making money off of us?

Agree with u two hands!:thumbup::thumbup: Definitely! Definitely!

 

[Earthcircle]

Actually, Nardil did make me less shy. But people told me that I was very rude on Nardil. I had no awareness of this. I thought I was making a good impression, but evidently I came across as really jerky on that drug. So, for the sake of not offending people and hurting their feelings, I think it's best for me not to take Nardil.