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Jaded towards psychiatrists, but hopeful

QuietSoulCasual Contributor01 Oct 2015, 4:58 pm AEST

Jaded towards psychiatrists, but hopeful

Hi all.

It's been a while since i have been in forums of this nature. I remember years ago the MSN chat rooms, they were not good places, all that happened were people posting inappropriate stuff and others getting triggered.

Anyways...

I have struggled with depression throughout my life, some times worse than others. I have also experienced some trauma in my life. When I was 14, i experienced the onset of bipolar disorder, it was a pretty scary time.

These days, and three breakdowns later, i think i am doing ok. For me anyway. Not perfect, far from it, but better than i was a while back.

Some of the things that i really struggle with now are crap doctors. Psychiatrists if i am specific. I have always kept that to myself in these forums because i don't want to discourage others from seeking help if they need it (and in that regard i should add that most of my experiences have been positive overall) but there are some really toxic ones around and there are experiences that leave people scarred and unable/unwilling to seek out that help again at their most desperate point. I feel it's a discussion that needs ot be had. The issue needs to be flagged and brought into the light by orgs such as Sane and others.

I had a bad experience this year. I wish i never saw her. I don't think she was/is an evil person, i just think they get to a point where they don't pay attention, where they can be flippant, careless, indifferent or just burnt out. Some of the ones who have been around for a while can also become really cynical, to the point they look at you with suspicion like youi're lying about your condition or the extent of what you are going through or the meds you are on. Psychs deal with some really heavy stuff and i guess in some way they have to mentally and emotionally remove themselves from their "work self", i do get that, but i don't know what support is around for them to make sure they are giving their clients appropriate care and not leaving them worse than when they came in the door.

So i saw this psych in May, and i had seen my old psych before her at the end of last year. I have made an appointment with my old one for next month but i am seriously considering cancelling it... i was pressured into making the appointment by hospital staff (not psych hospital, but where i recently had a baby) and i don't mind my old one, he is ok... no miracle worker but he isn't toxic so that's good enough for me these days. What will happen is that i will pay a tidy sum for him to ask me common sense questions and try to tweak my meds. The thing is, i already know i can't take certain meds because i am breastfeeding my newborn baby. Those are the meds he would prefer me to be on, which i haven't been on because i have been pregnant or trying to get pregnant. I can't go on them anyway, so we will have that conversation and i will leave his rooms the same way i went in. No worse, no better, just the same, and there's nothing he can do really because of my current circumstances.

My psychologist wanted me to try a new psych, but she works at a hospital that the toxic one from May has some connection with and i feel like i need ot avoid all places this other psych works at.

Sorry for the rant. Am just really tired of all this, and praying to God that i don't have another breakdown in my life because i don't know if i couold handle trying to get help again and encountering another toxic human when i am feeling so vulnerable. Sorry if this triggers anyone. I feel like i have nowhere to express this...

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In response to: Jaded towards psychiatrists, but hopeful

JlolSenior Contributor02 June 2025, 1:05 pm AEST

Re: Jaded towards psychiatrists, but hopeful

How can we ever have a productive discussion if we're forbidden from speaking our point-of-view? Or our values?

If I can put on my tinfoil hat for a moment (and I hate to admit that I sound like a tinfoil hat wearer when I say this), but I think a very much boiled down version of the problem is this:

A hell of a lot of mental health issues are caused by inequality issues - housing, cost of living, wage stagnation to name a few.
Even more are caused by community break down issues - loneliness, unstable living arrangements, time-poorness.
Both of these issues require a lot of money and policy change to fix. A few thoughts are:
1. Making housing affordable to the everyday person (implement policies to redirect investment away from property to the stock market)
2. Equipping the RBA with more tools (other than increasing loan repayments for the lower and middle classes) to combat inflation
3. Creating environments/regulations at work where employers are incentivised to pay their employees inline with inflation (stronger unions)
4. More funding for social and sports clubs (to help combat loneliness)
5. More funding for better public transport (to help reduce time on the road)
These are not changing because the current situation benefits the rich/ruling classes (at least Labor are doing some things though, to their credit)
Tinfoil hat time: The rich/ruling classes don't want people to realise that their desired policies may be the cause of their unhappiness (and vote against their interests) so control the narrative by encouraging many people believe these feelings of discomfort/stress/anxiety/depression are mental illness and thus a problem of the individual, not broader society. They want people to think this angst they're feeling is their own fault/illness, that they're the "broken" factor and so shouldn't try to change anything broader (vote against the interests of the rich). Thinking of the word "suicide" and how its censored, it may be because it is quite evocative and may encourage people to investigate, get fed up with the situation and act. I mean, it's crazy how apps like Instagram (owned by Zuckerburg, arguably part of an oligarchy) censor that word but are fine with any number of divisive racial slurs. It's like they're saying "you poor people fight among yourselves, but don't you dare start questioning why so many people are offing themselves".

Of course this isn't to say this is where all mental illness come from. And is just me spitballing.

In response to: Re: Jaded towards psychiatrists, but hopeful

chibamSenior Contributor02 June 2025, 6:12 pm AEST

Re: Jaded towards psychiatrists, but hopeful

@Jlol

Generally, I agree with your post.

@Jlol wrote:
5. Tinfoil hat time: The rich/ruling classes don't want people to realise that their desired policies may be the cause of their unhappiness (and vote against their interests) so control the narrative by encouraging many people believe these feelings of discomfort/stress/anxiety/depression are mental illness and thus a problem of the individual, not broader society. They want people to think this angst they're feeling is their own fault/illness, that they're the "broken" factor and so shouldn't try to change anything broader...

There's probably more truth to this then I care to admit. It never fails to amaze me just how many people still buy in to the idea that, if their depressed, it's some kind of defect within them, when you can listen to the circumstances of their life and see plain as day that it's completely and sane and rational for a person with a life that terrible to be depressed - even suicidal - about it.

However, I have a different theory to yours about the identity of the "men behind the curtain" masterminding this state of affairs. I believe it's not so much the "rich" who yearn to get richer, as it is the academics who yearn to control the hearts and minds of everybody around them.

All these great college professors and brains' trusts of the world's various industries, who have had their egos stoked probably since grade school; who have been told their whole lives that what resides their heads is of higher quality then the dreck they are surrounded by; and who consequently believe that it is their god-given right and obligation to rule the world as hidden kings, for only their superior brains are able to fathom what an ideal society ought to look like, and how it ought to function.

There is an insidiousness to monetary greed, and so I can understand how the appeal of thinking that the plight of the 'misfits' is all down to greedy rich people wanting to squeeze money out of the masses.

But, IMHO, the suppression we see these days of the masses of people with crappy lives is far too deliberate, persistant and malicious to be explained away by mere monetary greed. To me, it indicates a deeper ideological motive. It indicates an agenda to make sure the world looks and functions a certain way; and to insure that the miserable masses won't have the power to completely upend this existing framework of society, and reshape it into a completely differant design that suits them.

Making money is relatively easy. Plenty of people have made fortunes selling absurd junk to the world.

But manipulating the world so that you actually like what you see when you step out your front door and look around at the world around you? That takes a lot of effort and control. That really requires you to constrain the masses into behaving in a much more specific manner then simply handing over their money for some arbitrary product.

@Jlol wrote:
3. Both of these issues require a lot of money and policy change to fix. A few thoughts are:
Making housing affordable to the everyday person (implement policies to redirect investment away from property to the stock market)
Equipping the RBA with more tools (other than increasing loan repayments for the lower and middle classes) to combat inflation
Creating environments/regulations at work where employers are incentivised to pay their employees inline with inflation (stronger unions)
More funding for social and sports clubs (to help combat loneliness)
More funding for better public transport (to help reduce time on the road)

Policy change, yes, but "a lot of money"? When we considder just how much money is already being fruitlessly spent on useless mental healthcare, which could be redirected into differant tools that can actually help people? And the significant increase in money that will be made if we actually gave these alienated people jobs?

I really doubt that sensible and adequately-funded mental health policy would cost society a significant degree more then what we are already paying.

I keep reflecting back on my own dealings with the mental health system. My family & the government spent thousands of dollars on outright useless mental health treatment, that condemned me to lifetime unemployment; when other people I knew got the exact same help I needed, for free, from their friends & family, and got to have jobs - much to the delight, I'm sure, of the employment minister & treasurer.

When you really, really look at our currant system and how it fails, I just can't see how people still believe that effective mental health policy must mean more expense; the truth is the exact opposite: less expense, and much more profit!

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