Mental health stigma

[RetiredGySgt]

There is a huge problem in the US in regards to mental health. People don't want to talk about it or deal with it. And then we have those that insist mental issues are either made up or non existent.

We see it right here on this board. Hell we even have those with mental issues attacking others with mental issues.

While I agree the mental health profession is to quick to label some problems that are not problems mental health issues are REAL. We need to accept that and move on.

Some people do not seek help out of stigma for the problems. Some people do not understand there are remedies because a lot of information is not out there and promulgated.

And then there are those that are sick and do not seek help because they are sick. And where do we draw the line on forcing help?

 

[Sunshine]

There is a huge problem in the US in regards to mental health. People don't want to talk about it or deal with it. And then we have those that insist mental issues are either made up or non existent.

We see it right here on this board. Hell we even have those with mental issues attacking others with mental issues.

While I agree the mental health profession is to quick to label some problems that are not problems mental health issues are REAL. We need to accept that and move on.

Some people do not seek help out of stigma for the problems. Some people do not understand there are remedies because a lot of information is not out there and promulgated.

And then there are those that are sick and do not seek help because they are sick. And where do we draw the line on forcing help?

An interesting factoid: Psychiatrists and psych nurses get paid a lot less than their counterparts in medicine. There was an article about that a few years ago in one of the journals which postulated that this is just an extension of the stigma to the providers. Here is an interesting article:

But the stigma does not stop with patients: it spills over to psychiatry itself. We all can feel the invisible tattoos imposed on our medical discipline, a bizarre “guilt by association” despite our professional role and service. Consider the following examples of subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination toward psychiatry:
•Our families and friends think we are not “real” doctors, although our medical training and education are practically identical in rigor and duration to that of our colleagues in surgery, cardiology, or neurology.
•Psychiatric services are devalued by third-party payers with ridiculously low reimbursement, high co-payments, and arbitrarily meager annual or lifetime caps. Insurance executives often foolishly decide psychotherapy is not worth paying for despite its enormous value to many patients.
•Managed care invented the diabolical concept of “carve out” to exclude psychiatric services from parity with other medical/surgical services to relegate mental health to a lower tier (ie, less important) reimbursement. And how absurd is the one-size-fits-all 15-minute check?
•Insurance companies discriminate against the “high cost” of the latest psychiatric drugs, yet happily pay for much costlier drugs for nonpsychiatric disorders. For example, they consider $5,000 a year for an antipsychotic too high—as if our patients are not worth it—and demand that cheaper, 45-year-old drugs such as haloperidol continue to be used, although numerous studies have shown haloperidol is neurotoxic.1-4 Yet the same insurance company does not hesitate to pay $50,000 a year for the latest multiple sclerosis drug, $60,000 a year to prolong a terminal cancer patient’s life by just a few months, $120,000 a year to treat patients with hemophilia, $200,000 a year for Fabry’s disease, $350,000 a year for hereditary angioedema, etc.
•Despite the serious shortage of psychiatrists, the law of supply and demand does not seem to apply to psychiatrists’ compensation. Many believe psychiatrists should receive significantly higher compensation than they currently do, given the severe shortages around the country.
•Psychiatrists are experts in determining whether patients are a danger to themselves and require involuntary hospitalization and pharmacotherapy. Yet those medical decisions are made by the courts. Can anyone imagine the courts usurping the right of cardiologists or neurologists to hospitalize or rapidly medicate an unconscious heart attack or stroke patient?
•Despite the fact that rates of response, remission, and recovery observed in psychiatry are similar to those seen with many medical or surgical treatments, the perception persists that psychiatric therapies have minimal efficacy, an insidious devaluation of what we can do for our patients. The antipsychiatry movement never ceases to viciously attack the scientific validity and benefits of antidepressants,5 antipsychotics, or mood stabilizers.

http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/index.php?id=22661&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=176248

I have heard Dr. Nasrala speak, but I don't know him personally. I do believe he is onto something.

I am less concerned about stigma per se than I am about what is going on regarding gun rights issues. Many veterans have PTSD, and now that is something that can keep them from owing a gun. In this area, getting that nice deer in the freezer is really critical to the livelihood of a lot of people. When a person with PTSD is effectively treated and the illness is under control, there is no reason whatsoever that he should not be able to own a gun. Many will forgo much needed treatment so they can continue to own guns. That just should not be.

I have a friend who is CEO of a psych hospital. She used to say many years ago that one day psychiatry will not carry the stigma. Now she says she does not believe the stigma will be gone in her lifetime. I agree with her. It's going to be a long time before the stigma of mental illness is gone.

 

[alisha7525]

pyschtrists do not believe in the mental health in a crisis situation its a global problem which needs to be solved and this could be done only when there is an increase in the hype for the topic and to create belief in people about their mental welness

 

[JakeStarkey]

thanks to RGS and Sunshine for their comments on an important topic.

 

[Bfgrn]

There is a huge problem in the US in regards to mental health. People don't want to talk about it or deal with it. And then we have those that insist mental issues are either made up or non existent.

We see it right here on this board. Hell we even have those with mental issues attacking others with mental issues.

While I agree the mental health profession is to quick to label some problems that are not problems mental health issues are REAL. We need to accept that and move on.

Some people do not seek help out of stigma for the problems. Some people do not understand there are remedies because a lot of information is not out there and promulgated.

And then there are those that are sick and do not seek help because they are sick. And where do we draw the line on forcing help?

Forcing help? How do you plan to pay for this forced help?

 

[alisha7525]

Nowadays the mental health has become a social stigma and the cases of people suffering frm mental disorders are increasing day by day

 

[equalizer_0]

Psychiatry is a pseudo-religious cult based on the 19th-century Austrian swinger scene and drug culture with all the opium dens, overt prostitution, secret drunkenness and all that depravity on which the United States declared war back in 1917.

American entry into World War I - Wikipedia

Sigmund Freud, the famous sexologist and psychoanalyst, would be a registered sex offender today, especially because of his penchant for torturing lesbian women by methods so inhumane as to be beyond all imagination of outsiders to the so-called "mental health" field.

Carl Jung, the famous personality typologist, on whose work the Myers-Briggs and other personality classifications used for government employment among other purposes are based, would in more recent times be a Nazi war criminal hunted to the ends of the earth.

Yet almost the entire field of Western psychiatry, psychology, counseling, therapy, and mental health treatment is based on the work of this odd 19th-century Austrian "couple."

 

[badger2]

'We may well ponder the the possibility that the analytic imperialism of the Oedipus complex led Freud to rediscover, and to lend all the weight of his authority to, the unfortunate misplacement of the concept of autism to schizophrenia. For we must not delude ourselves. Freud doesn't like schizophrenics. He doesn't like their resistance to being oedipalized, and tends to treat them more or less as animals. They mistake words for things, he says. They are apathetic, narcissistic, cut off from reality, incapable of achieving transference; they resemble philosophers -- "an undesirable resemblance." '
(Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p.23 The Desiring Machines)

 

[Wyatt earp]

There is a huge problem in the US in regards to mental health. People don't want to talk about it or deal with it. And then we have those that insist mental issues are either made up or non existent.

We see it right here on this board. Hell we even have those with mental issues attacking others with mental issues.

While I agree the mental health profession is to quick to label some problems that are not problems mental health issues are REAL. We need to accept that and move on.

Some people do not seek help out of stigma for the problems. Some people do not understand there are remedies because a lot of information is not out there and promulgated.

And then there are those that are sick and do not seek help because they are sick. And where do we draw the line on forcing help?

An interesting factoid: Psychiatrists and psych nurses get paid a lot less than their counterparts in medicine. There was an article about that a few years ago in one of the journals which postulated that this is just an extension of the stigma to the providers. Here is an interesting article:

But the stigma does not stop with patients: it spills over to psychiatry itself. We all can feel the invisible tattoos imposed on our medical discipline, a bizarre “guilt by association” despite our professional role and service. Consider the following examples of subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination toward psychiatry:
•Our families and friends think we are not “real” doctors, although our medical training and education are practically identical in rigor and duration to that of our colleagues in surgery, cardiology, or neurology.
•Psychiatric services are devalued by third-party payers with ridiculously low reimbursement, high co-payments, and arbitrarily meager annual or lifetime caps. Insurance executives often foolishly decide psychotherapy is not worth paying for despite its enormous value to many patients.
•Managed care invented the diabolical concept of “carve out” to exclude psychiatric services from parity with other medical/surgical services to relegate mental health to a lower tier (ie, less important) reimbursement. And how absurd is the one-size-fits-all 15-minute check?
•Insurance companies discriminate against the “high cost” of the latest psychiatric drugs, yet happily pay for much costlier drugs for nonpsychiatric disorders. For example, they consider $5,000 a year for an antipsychotic too high—as if our patients are not worth it—and demand that cheaper, 45-year-old drugs such as haloperidol continue to be used, although numerous studies have shown haloperidol is neurotoxic.1-4 Yet the same insurance company does not hesitate to pay $50,000 a year for the latest multiple sclerosis drug, $60,000 a year to prolong a terminal cancer patient’s life by just a few months, $120,000 a year to treat patients with hemophilia, $200,000 a year for Fabry’s disease, $350,000 a year for hereditary angioedema, etc.
•Despite the serious shortage of psychiatrists, the law of supply and demand does not seem to apply to psychiatrists’ compensation. Many believe psychiatrists should receive significantly higher compensation than they currently do, given the severe shortages around the country.
•Psychiatrists are experts in determining whether patients are a danger to themselves and require involuntary hospitalization and pharmacotherapy. Yet those medical decisions are made by the courts. Can anyone imagine the courts usurping the right of cardiologists or neurologists to hospitalize or rapidly medicate an unconscious heart attack or stroke patient?
•Despite the fact that rates of response, remission, and recovery observed in psychiatry are similar to those seen with many medical or surgical treatments, the perception persists that psychiatric therapies have minimal efficacy, an insidious devaluation of what we can do for our patients. The antipsychiatry movement never ceases to viciously attack the scientific validity and benefits of antidepressants,5 antipsychotics, or mood stabilizers.

http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/index.php?id=22661&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=176248

I have heard Dr. Nasrala speak, but I don't know him personally. I do believe he is onto something.

I am less concerned about stigma per se than I am about what is going on regarding gun rights issues. Many veterans have PTSD, and now that is something that can keep them from owing a gun. In this area, getting that nice deer in the freezer is really critical to the livelihood of a lot of people. When a person with PTSD is effectively treated and the illness is under control, there is no reason whatsoever that he should not be able to own a gun. Many will forgo much needed treatment so they can continue to own guns. That just should not be.

I have a friend who is CEO of a psych hospital. She used to say many years ago that one day psychiatry will not carry the stigma. Now she says she does not believe the stigma will be gone in her lifetime. I agree with her. It's going to be a long time before the stigma of mental illness is gone.

^^ another poster I miss..

 

[equalizer_0]

I am less concerned about stigma per se than I am about what is going on regarding gun rights issues. Many veterans have PTSD, and now that is something that can keep them from owing a gun. In this area, getting that nice deer in the freezer is really critical to the livelihood of a lot of people. When a person with PTSD is effectively treated and the illness is under control, there is no reason whatsoever that he should not be able to own a gun. Many will forgo much needed treatment so they can continue to own guns. That just should not be.

^^ another poster I miss..

Something is a little bit off with that poster's lack of appropriate clothing, gratuitous reference to "subsistence hunting," and the alleged needfulness of the alleged "treatment" for the alleged Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Take a key snippet from that poster's words:

... so they can continue to own guns. That just should not be.

Just another anti-gunner.

 

[task0778]

It's one thing if a certified mental illness professional says so-and-so shouldn't have a gun but it's another if an effing bureaucrat does it. The fact that an individual needs help filling out a form is not a guarantor of mental illness. Seems to me the individual should have the right to dispute the finding in a court of law before his/her 2nd amendment rights are suspended. And I might add that if the individual is pronounced cured or at least functional in society then those suspended rights ought to be lifted.

The whole area of mental illness is a complex and difficult one to deal with. We do need to remove the stigma over it, but the problem is that we seem to have too many people who need help and won't seek it out merely because they don't think they have a problem. So how do you get a person who needs treatment to get it if they don't want it? Chances are in many cases treatment would be ineffective anyway if the person doesn't recognize they have a problem. And who decides whether a person should be forced to get help until and unless they've done something to warrant it. Are we going to lock people up involuntarily? Not sure we can or should do that unless one of those certified mental illness professionals say it's necessary.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Legally in order to be denied your rights a JUDGE must rule that you are incompetent. any other attempt to remove rights is illegal and unconstitutional.

 

[task0778]

Legally in order to be denied your rights a JUDGE must rule that you are incompetent. any other attempt to remove rights is illegal and unconstitutional.

" Under federal law, veterans who have been assigned fiduciaries — people who manage their finances — can be deemed mentally incompetent. Backers of the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act say that the law has been applied too broadly against veterans who remain fit to carry a firearm. "

A congressional bill could allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to own guns

That bill passed in the House but died in the Senate last year (2017). Here's what it says

" (Sec. 2) This bill prohibits, in any case arising out of the administration of laws and benefits by the Department of Veterans Affairs, any person who is mentally incapacitated, deemed mentally incompetent, or experiencing an extended loss of consciousness from being considered adjudicated as a mental defective for purposes of the right to receive or transport firearms without the order or finding of a judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others. "

It may well be that such persons ought not to be in possession of a firearm, but maybe not all of them. The decision over who is mentally incapacitated or incompetent ought not to be made by some nameless and faceless bureaucrat, and every American citizen ought to have his/her day in court to defend their rights BEFORE they are taken away. And we need to be careful not to abrogate somebody's constitutional rights without due process and not because some bureaucrat decides to do so. And not just the 2nd Amendment rights either, we need to zealously guard those rights or we could lose them.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

That law would have been unconstitutional on its face and challenged in court.

 

[badger2]

Beating the national average, Wisconsin.

6 Feb 2018 Badger Herald Suicide, Psychiatric Hospitalization Increases Among Wisconsin Youths
https://badgerherald.com/news/2018/...among-wisconsin-youths-beat-national-average/

 

[badger2]

2017 Report to the Wisconsin Legislature
https://children.wi.gov/Documents/2017OCMHAnnualReport.pdf

 

[badger2]

On p. 7 of the report, readers may click on "Tennessee facility."

The Badger Herald article can be retrieved. It states, "If someone in your family has died from suicide, then you're about six times more likely to die from suicide yourself. It emanates across generations."

 

[Leo123]

There is a huge problem in the US in regards to mental health. People don't want to talk about it or deal with it. And then we have those that insist mental issues are either made up or non existent.

We see it right here on this board. Hell we even have those with mental issues attacking others with mental issues.

While I agree the mental health profession is to quick to label some problems that are not problems mental health issues are REAL. We need to accept that and move on.

Some people do not seek help out of stigma for the problems. Some people do not understand there are remedies because a lot of information is not out there and promulgated.

And then there are those that are sick and do not seek help because they are sick. And where do we draw the line on forcing help?

Problems with gender identiy is a huge mental problem that we are told is non existent..

 

[badger2]

Gender identity crises are real. Look no further than youth (assumed by most to be adolescents), though in the report we posted, the authorities want to go back to childhood to look for causes, which is suspicious.

 

[anotherlife]

Mental health is interesting. Recently, the DSM was expanded greatly, to creat mental health names and charge codes to many things that previously were classified as simple bad behavior.

This will allow mental health workers to greatly expand their businesses and insurance companies to derive new revenue sources for mental health treatments.

Once the money is there, the level of respect wil be equal for mental health.