America’s Psych/Neuro Crisis: Silence From The Medics
You might have noticed, if you’re paying attention, that the U.S. has a major set of medical crises. An epidemic of mass killings from clearly deranged perpetrators who’ve slipped through the net of the psych/neuro professionals unnoticed. And an epidemic of broken vets returning home from the killing fields with PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). . The response from the medical profession (using this term advisedly)? Silence.
NAMI reports that nearly 14 million Americans live with chronic mental illness such as Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar or major depression disorders. Millions more undiagnosed. The VA reports that nearly a million veterans using their services are diagnosed with PTSD/or TBI. A similar number out there undiagnosed.
It is not like these poor souls are new to our society. Decades have elapsed for sufferers of this pain to be better understood by so called medical science. I say so called because a friend of my graduating from medical school told me his field was largely not driven by science, but rather, medicine was an “art”. Yet they’ve sold it to us as a science and we’re paying dearly for it. I believe he’s right. But art or not, what have you heard from the halls of medical learning lately about either of these crises? Nothing. Nada.
Stone cold silence from our medical schools, institutes of neuroscience and schools of psychiatry. No public discussion led by them as you might expect or wish. No media blitzes with either insights on causes or remedies. They just keep making money and stay very quiet, as if to go unnoticed. We’ll, I’m noticing and I am appalled. The graphic here in this blog is intended to represent these cowards, not the broken souls they fail to serve.
I’ll leave the connection to gun violence to other forums. And discussions about an obviously overwhelmed and understaffed VA to address their inability to either certify the presence of these disorders with any kind of science or provide adequate lifetime treatment.
I read about Bush’s knee surgery and Cheney’s new heart, but I read nothing about their deliberate abuse of power sending our young men and women off to kill, be killed and immerse in the horrors of slaughter. I don’t give a rats ass about either of them and have no expectation that we’ll ever hear any expressions of remorse for their crime against these young people, the civilians in Iraq or Af/Pak or our broken society.
It is time for the Psych/Neuro practitioners to stand up, be accountable and own up to their failure. It is time for reform and leadership among their ranks to address these long neglected issues. It is time for research funding as needed and outreach from the cloistered, insular halls of medical learning.
Tags: Featured
And you checked with how many practitioners in these fields before climbing atop your high dudgeon?
Here’s the American Medical Association’s web page about PTSD affecting military veterans.
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/public-health/joining-forces.page
It doesn’t feature voice technology, so I guess, technically, it’s silence.
Only 30% of physicians belong to the AMA, their lobbying organization; 77% surveyed report the AMA does not represent their views.
That aside, read my post again. I am referring to medical schools, teaching institutions and their leaders/faculty, including schools of psychiatry and psychotherapy.
And you think they should be saying — what, exactly? What do you consider appropriate for educators to say here? Don’t you think that if they had a solution to this “crisis” (your word, not backed up by anything by hyperventilating) they would say something?
You seem to imply that this “crisis” is the fault of “the schools” not saying — what? Are you under some delusion that we have cures for psychiatric problems?
Sorry, but I don’t see why you want a discussion with the public, considering the public can’t seem to understand much simpler problems than mental illness.
OK I can’t find the link right now (I’ll try to later tonight), but I read recently that while 85% of physicians in the US accept health insurance, only 59% of of psychologists and psychiatrists do. They don’t have to, because they can make quite a nice living off the clients who can afford to write the checks. The ones who do accept private health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, etc., tend to have (a) less experience; (b) far larger client loads; and (c) practice predominantly via group rather than individual sessions (logic of scale with a high client load, not necessarily clinical preference). They also see their clients far less regularly.
Why does this imbalance exist? I’d hazard to guess two reasons: (a) that to get out with a degree and get the experience necessary for independent practice is pretty much as costly for these folks as it is for any specialty doc, so they follow the money when they are done. (b) that working entirely with groups and heavy case loads of people who don’t (in the main) have great coping skills (due to background, education, opportunity, etc.) and who come and go into therapy and relapse often is just not too damn conducive to longevity. I used to work in drug/alcohol counseling in the US Army–given that only about 18% of alcoholics completed treatment satisfactorily no matter what you did, there was a lot of burn-out.
So it’s a high-skill profession that is in short enough supply to have a seller’s market.
As for attacking the schools that graduate these individuals, feel free, but I think that’s a pretty ridiculous strategy.
Umm, I have no standing to make editorial remarks but I’ve noticed an alarming trend in the electronic media toward fear and more fear. I realize that blogs are supposed to motivate people to take action. But the constant “crisis” refrain is starting get on my nerves. Yes, we have plenty of problems without much in the way of solutions. I just can’t figure out what scaring the beejeebers out of us does to improve that situation. The risk is that “Chicken Little” syndrome sets in. Oh well, it’s too big a crisis for me to have any impact.
Part of the problem here is market forces — mental health coverage (until recently and even that could be improved) by insurers was inadequate to the real need AND there isn’t much that is *blockbuster* about potential treatments yet AND the real demand (who really needs the help) is still a question AND we still haven’t reached the point where it is as acceptable to be in treatment for schizophrenia as it is to get a knee replacement. There’s plenty of people who get that the system in its entirely is inadequate, the problem is in figuring out a way to fix that — over coming some of the problems that keep the system inadequate.
@auntie…Fear is being used to render the masses dependent. Fear the gunman, fear the terrorist, fear your neighbor because he has different views. This method was used to usher in the Third Reich, it brought Hitler to power. It is well worth your effort to research this. Propaganda is a weapon in itself. As for mass mental illness, just walk out your front door…