Hi @Former-Member,
I am trying to catch up on about a bazillion posts that I need to respond to. You are my chosen one for this Sunday afternoon. 
My cats are currently both doing what cats do best - sleeping!
Violin is going well. My teacher has asked me to revise old stuff over the holidays. I really like this idea because one of my frustrations with my previous teacher was that I felt he was dragging me through the material too quickly. My teacher is having an extra week off at the start of term so I still have almost 2 weeks to perfect the material I am working on for him.
I've never really engaged with carers before and I can see that in some ways the experiences of consumers and carers are similar and in other ways they are different. I would LIKE to think that carers are listened to a bit more than consumers, but when I think about it...they probably aren't. I really hate the way doctors, psychologists etc. are held up as "experts" when the reality is that a lot of them are pretty darn clueless. I can imagine that you probably don't get much further as a carer, than I do as a consumer, when it comes to asking for the evidence base upon which decisions are being made.
I have a bit of a flair for inferential statistics (most likely one of my cooler aspie quirks!) so I can actually read and understand the results section of a quantitative research paper rather than just glazing over at all the numbers and Greek letters. I can guarantee you that the vast majority of health practitioners do not remember anything they learnt in their stats classes during their degree. Both my psychologist and my GP have admitted to me that they don't remember any of it! I can well imagine that health professionals would struggle to produce for you the research evidence that they are basing their decisions on.
I find it really funny when someone starts a sentence with "the research says...". My most common response to this is "would you be able to give me the reference for that research so that I can take a look at it for myself." I've never once had someone able to produce it. It seems to me that people think that by starting a sentence with "the research says..." this alone supports their argument. Well no, if the issue is very important to me (like, say, putting a particular drug into my body), then I want to know the sample size, the effect size, who conducted the study, whether it has been replicated, etc etc.
I super wish I had an answer for you, Darcy. The whole system makes me so cranky. I think a big part of the problem is that psychiatry is just so far behind other fields of medicine. I guess they are doing their best - just like the doctors were doing their best to treat physical ailments 200 years ago...it's just that their best at that time was pretty inadequate.
Anyway, I hope you and Mr Darcy are having a nice weekend. I'm not going to stay on the forums too long - I want to go and play in the garden for a while before it gets dark. 
