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New BMJ article by White & co: Merge neurology and psychiatry
- Thread starter Anne
- Start date
SOC
Senior Member
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- 7,849
Well, if they don't want to get educated, they can give up their claim to know what's going on physically in the brain and become psychologists.
If it's also too much effort to do the additional study to become psychologists, then what the heck was it that they did learn during their expensive educations? Not enough psychology and not enough neurology, but they still get a medical degree that allows them to mess around in both fields?
heapsreal
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What i dont like about psychiatry is that there is now actual diagnotic test for certain conditions only symptom based and behavioural based diagnoses. If they could prove that certain neurotransmitters were low, a commercial test gp's could use etc then i think it may have merit in being more scientific and then classified as neurology.
Also i think they could have a special neurology type docs who deal with ME/CFS where they treat these neurological symptoms like pots but diagnose patients better with proper tilt table testing etc.
Depression is a common secondary effect of any chronic illness, it would be nice to be able to test a patients serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine levels and treat appropriately, not just guess which antidepressants are going to help, which would reduce alot of the trial and error guess work of using antidepressants, plus also use the past experience of me/cfs patient that shows we can only tolerate low doses, much lower then commonly used by general public and the tricyclics seem to be the better tolerated then the newer ssri's.
I think many of us can end up in a hole feeling depressed and hopeless, but medication isnt going to cure us but they should realise it can help us feel abit better about feeling like crap, no different to having a broken leg and being given pain killers, they dont address the problem directly but help us cope until we start to recover or stabilise.
Another thing i think docs really need to be up to speed with that can help neurological problems as well as things like depression is balancing hormones etc. I think if studies were done on depressed population they would find many abnormalities in these people and addressing these issues is alot closer to the cause sometimes then just uses/handing out antidepressant and should be looked into first before blindingly handing out antidepressants.
Lastly i really think neurology of cfs/me really needs to get up to speed on sleep, lack of sleep can effect everyones emotional state, treating sleep effectively can also help correct many hormonal issues as well as depressed feeling etc i think medicine is too far behind in treating chronic sleep disorders like insomnia found in cfs/me and is just shrugged off as anxiety related which i dont think is the case in many cfs/me people.
We need proper specialists in cfs/me neurologists and then immunologists, thats my opinion on the matter for what its worth.
cheers!!!
Also i think they could have a special neurology type docs who deal with ME/CFS where they treat these neurological symptoms like pots but diagnose patients better with proper tilt table testing etc.
Depression is a common secondary effect of any chronic illness, it would be nice to be able to test a patients serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine levels and treat appropriately, not just guess which antidepressants are going to help, which would reduce alot of the trial and error guess work of using antidepressants, plus also use the past experience of me/cfs patient that shows we can only tolerate low doses, much lower then commonly used by general public and the tricyclics seem to be the better tolerated then the newer ssri's.
I think many of us can end up in a hole feeling depressed and hopeless, but medication isnt going to cure us but they should realise it can help us feel abit better about feeling like crap, no different to having a broken leg and being given pain killers, they dont address the problem directly but help us cope until we start to recover or stabilise.
Another thing i think docs really need to be up to speed with that can help neurological problems as well as things like depression is balancing hormones etc. I think if studies were done on depressed population they would find many abnormalities in these people and addressing these issues is alot closer to the cause sometimes then just uses/handing out antidepressant and should be looked into first before blindingly handing out antidepressants.
Lastly i really think neurology of cfs/me really needs to get up to speed on sleep, lack of sleep can effect everyones emotional state, treating sleep effectively can also help correct many hormonal issues as well as depressed feeling etc i think medicine is too far behind in treating chronic sleep disorders like insomnia found in cfs/me and is just shrugged off as anxiety related which i dont think is the case in many cfs/me people.
We need proper specialists in cfs/me neurologists and then immunologists, thats my opinion on the matter for what its worth.
cheers!!!
Good point - I use light therapy and darkness therapy for balancing my sleep. Bright light therapy is also used quite successfully for both seasonal affective disorder and non-seasonal depression, and according to some studies can be as effective as antidepressants. Darkness therapy may be used for treating bipolar disorder, not quite sure how it fits into the standard depression side of things. Anyway, I'm not depressed. I tend to be rather stressed, and I have the odd bout of anxiety (mainly due to PMDD), but not depressed. Considering that we all have sleep problems, this is the sort of area they really should look into. It's not funded by the pharmaceutical companies or the psychology lobby, of course. There should be research, damnit. Something meaningful about circadian rhythms and serotonin levels and so forth, as opposed to the usual slap on the wrist and completely useless lecture about sleep hygiene ("reserve your bedroom for sleep and sex only" - yeah, right).
Of Course this makes the clinical job easier and if the patient doesn't improve, tries to stand up form themselves, etc. then they're being difficult at best, refusing to accept their illness or at worst have false illness beliefs about their illness.
Of course there's all the money to be made by group CBT and all that money to be saved by no longer having to deeply invest in research nor (real) treatment of numerous disorders. I hear the pitter patter err actual scratch that I hear the stampeding thunder of bureaucratic bean counters running to embrace this with arms wide open.
Of course there's all the money to be made by group CBT and all that money to be saved by no longer having to deeply invest in research nor (real) treatment of numerous disorders. I hear the pitter patter err actual scratch that I hear the stampeding thunder of bureaucratic bean counters running to embrace this with arms wide open.
It's the creep, creep of the psychos looking for some respectabilty - ME multisystem pathologies - perhaps they should also learn Virology, Immunology, Endocrinology even Genetics - are they educated enough ?? My Neurologist didn't know and apologised saying - it's thought viral having ruled out things in his discipline - MS, Parkinsons etc. Didn't rule out the polio virus I noticed.