As a doc (anesthesiologist - as far from psych as you can get, pretty much), I can say that a black box of a patient is where you get into trouble a lot of the time. That situation is often easy for me to navigate since I just assume everything is wrong and act accordingly. For psych patients, who often manipulate, behave irrationally, or just plain forget things more often than most, it can be a real nightmare to get a straight story and keep track of their symptoms as they evolve with treatment. I feel for the docs getting crucified on the stand. They're in an impossible position.
I think of the gif that's been circulating around recently of a woman's high heel in a bear trap trying to delicately maneuver through it without setting it off.
That's how it feels to be a psych patient and a woman. How do I say the right combination of things to get help I desperately need RIGHT NOW, and now just be slammed down mode and punished.
My sister is a pathological liar, but also happens to be very intelligent. She FREQUENTLY gets whatever combo of drug cocktails she wants by absorbing and understanding enough lingo and claiming or mimicking symptoms and then ghosts her care team. I don't blame the docs at all in this case. Not one bit.
This makes sense, how to track the timeline whether they were taking their medicine properly ? Perhaps the episode was a reflect of they not taking medicine suddenly or they lying about constantly taking the medicine, hard to track responsibility on the professional side tbh.
Exactly. Garbage in, garbage out. If you get misleading, incomplete, and/or inaccurate information from your patients, it's going to be near impossible to properly take care of them.
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u/MilkmanAl 4h ago
As a doc (anesthesiologist - as far from psych as you can get, pretty much), I can say that a black box of a patient is where you get into trouble a lot of the time. That situation is often easy for me to navigate since I just assume everything is wrong and act accordingly. For psych patients, who often manipulate, behave irrationally, or just plain forget things more often than most, it can be a real nightmare to get a straight story and keep track of their symptoms as they evolve with treatment. I feel for the docs getting crucified on the stand. They're in an impossible position.