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I just don’t understand how people who are supposed to have studied psychology during years can come with such a poor, and hurtful model.
I would like to know why arriving at a diagnosis is more important that looking under every rock for a real answer
In addition, somatizing patients use inordinate amounts of health care resources. One study4estimated that patients with somatization disorder (the most severe form of the condition) generated medical costs nine times greater than those of the average medical patient. Despite substantial amounts of medical attention, somatizing patients report high levels of disability and suffering.5Finally, physicians report that somatizing patients are frustrating to treat.6Physicians lack a sense of effectiveness when multiple complaints do not fit into usual diagnostic categories or patients do not fit into a typical office schedule.
The primary care physician's emotional response to a patient can serve as an early cue to pursue a somatization diagnosis. A feeling of frustration or anger at the number and complexity of symptoms and the time required to evaluate them in an apparently well person, or a sense of being overwhelmed by a patient who has had numerous evaluations by other physicians, may be a signal to the clinician to consider somatization in the differential diagnosis early in the patient's evaluation.
When a family system is under stress, identifying one person as a patient may provide a focus that stabilizes the family system and alleviates feelings of anxiety within the family. Members know how to interact with each other in the context of the illness. The patterns of behavior may become recurrent, and family rules about how each member should act are formed. The patterns may become dysfunctional when one member takes on the role of being weak and defective. The physician may reinforce this troublesome dynamic by focusing medical attention on the somatizing patient's disability and illness. The family system often has a powerful tendency to resist change, even though changes, such as the improved health or function of the identified patient, may be desired.
I think this is a problem that a lot of us have ... that little voice that whispers, "what if they're right?" Part of dealing with that self-doubt is experience. I know they're wrong because I've had five years of symptoms which completely contradict their explanations. The so-called "anxiety" symptoms only hit when upright - you'd have to be daft to think that's psychosomatic. Instead of being weaker after bed-rest forced by weeks of intense orthostatic intolerance flares, I'm stronger for being rested - that flies in the face of any deconditioning hypothesis. When I turned blue due to blood pressure problems, I was either asleep or nearly so ... certainly not causing any symptoms due to wrong-thinking while I was basically unconscious!And yes, there is part of me that keeps asking - am I just being a hypochondriac? Am I over-exaggerating tiny symptoms and causing my condition? Is that why noone can find anything... etc etc... It's so easy to ask that because that is what they are asking.
chipmunk said:"Once I got brain surgery to correct the epilepsy disorder I had, I began having conversion disorder but didn't ACTUALLY get diagnosed until three years later; this year."
@chipmunk1, this is actually not uncommon. There's a sizeable number of people who acquire "psychogenic" seizures after surgery for epilepsy. This article reports on it.
They explanation they give - and get this - is that there is a period of "psychiatric vulnerability" following the surgery, which brings on the psychogenic symptoms.
I know, right?
Other patients with histories of more serious psychiatric, intellectual, and medical problems from early life may develop NESs at a time more remote from surgery. These patients’ instrumental problem-solving and coping abilities are presumed to be compromised, so they may develop NESs as a way to avoid or escape from the challenge of performance demands of new role expectations that they cannot fulfill despite remission of seizures.
ther patients with histories of more serious psychiatric, intellectual, and medical problems from early life may develop NESs at a time more remote from surgery. These patients’ instrumental problem-solving and coping abilities are presumed to be compromised, so they may develop NESs as a way to avoid or escape from the challenge of performance demands of new role expectations that they cannot fulfill despite remission of seizures.
Some of these "mental health" experts should be institutionalised, not let loose on patients.
Various reasons have been advanced to account for the disproportionate number of female subjects with somatoform disorders. It has been suggested that gender-determined sociocultural patterns may favor expression of emotional distress through abnormal illness behavior in females
Right-hemisphere neurologic dysfunction also was found to be more common in patients with NESs after surgery. This finding is consistent with other reports suggesting greater co-occurrence of NESs and epileptic seizures in patients with right hemisphere dysfunction (28). Right hemisphere-damaged patients are known to have difficulties perceiving and assessing emotional cues (29). Consequently, these patients may be more likely to misperceive or misinterpret their postsurgical emotional instability and to misattribute the psychiatric symptoms to the already familiar experience of seizures, thereby leading to NESs after epilepsy surger
Beware sociopaths with advanced degrees and god complexes.
I used to find it really distressing too. But you do grow a thicker skin. And I now try to concentrate on what can be done, which helps a bit.Just looking at it in truncated form gets me so steamed up!
At best I think psychogenic medicine needs to be relegated to alternative medicine. I also think it needs a name change. Maybe something like Institutionally Approved Psychoquackery. Or just psychoquackery.Any claim that a treatment will only work if you believe in it is not scientific whether you are a homeopath, a faith healer or a neurologist.