What's everyone's opinion in regards to treatment vs cure in regards to both physical and mental health?
Do you feel doctors address the root cause of problems or only treat symptoms? If you feel a doctor does address the cause, does that doctor then release the patient once the patient no longer has a problem?
I have been treated by both doctors of the body and doctors of the mind. In both cases I require to know why they are doing what they are doing. If I don't get satisfactory answers, I move on. For one of my ailments I had to read medical research papers to establish a diagnosis, this because the medical research has not yet reached a sufficiently satisfactory state to include in doctors' training. I now have to educate all new medicos that I encounter about that condition. I may require and have required treatment of both the symptom and the root cause for any given ailment.
While I am both compos mentis and have sufficient knowledge of my own conditions, my doctors are there to serve and advise me, and I am ultimately responsible for all my own decisions, not them. My current general practitioner has given me carte blanche to treat and manage my own hypertension.
You are absolutely correct and I 100% agree with you. Everyone should view healthcare in this manner and act on their own behalf. Although my situation certainly differs from yours I also take my healthcare seriously and act on my own behalf. I may not always involve my doctors in all in that I do since many are simply incapable or unwilling to accept any medical knowledge that falls outside of what they already know.
Many people are in bad situations as their choice in medical professionals can be very limited based upon a number of factors such as geography.
Although I feel confident in my ability to understand and assist in my own medical care I feel helpless to assist those that I care about. For instance, a brother that is too bullheaded and ignorant to do the most basic things to assist in his own healthcare. My mother, who is not the brightest bulb, lacks access to information and wouldn't have the ability to digest it anyway, who is geographically limited in her healthcare choices and who suffers from ailments which further degrade her ability to reason and retain information. These people are frequently taken advantage of by a medical system designed to financially rape people rather than competently address their medical needs.
How do we address healthcare for the poor, for those unable to competently help themselves, and those that are severely limited in healthcare choices?
@FvckY0u To answer your question, look at the United Kingdom's National Health Service. It's not going to happen in the United $tates of Greed for perhaps at least 100 years.
Absolutely not .
Will treat u , maybe , in acute care setting for 48 hr max . Rest of that depends insurance approval . And if u don’t have insurance , forget about it .
Exception : suicide ideation / harm to others ideation . An order from the judge can be obtained and we can keep these individuals for up to 48 hrs even against their will . Or until placement at behavioral centers .
Overall , poor treatment , money talks , and if there none to be made , good bye
It’s heart breaking to watch and even worse to be a part of it .
Different rules apply in the United Kingdom and Australia. The practice of medicine for profit in the manner of the U$A would be unthinkable in both countries.
@anglophone right ???
I've got my own stories I could tell but I'm certain you have far better ones. My own experiences with myself and others I've known mirror that of what you stated. I certainly agree with you.
By limiting the number of people who can become doctors, the medical profession has ensured that a some portion of doctors are mainly interested in the wealth and income. That de-emphasizes quality of care in a major way. The same for the insurance companies who, faced with more need than their service can supply, turn health care into an assembly line.
My wife's shrink destroyed our marriage with his incompetence (prescribing an anti-depressant that killed her libido, and not telling us the side effect or checking back).
I've found doctors to be rarely able to address the root cause of problems. Being able to cure many problems must await further research. Where a cure is known, they usually don't mind actually helping someone.
However, just two days ago a friend bitterly complained that the local hospital sought to release a homeless man from ER before even making a diagnosis! If they had made a diagnosis, they'd be compelled to keep him and deal with his many problems. If there's no money to be made, to hell with the Hippocratic Oath.
I agree. With that said I find the whole discussion of government healthcare for all to be ridiculous. First we need to address what "healthcare" is before we dole it out to everyone.
As for depression, there are other things besides drugs that are scientifically proven to help but doctors will rarely discuss such options even as an addition to drug therapy. Certainly counseling is one option but there are others. Exercise, diet, certain supplementation, ECT, etc. Of course ECT isn't even an option for most people until/unless they've tried about 10 different drugs to no avail.
As for side effects of drugs, yeah, they rarely will discuss such things and only address them once a patient is suffering from them and then are more likely to add a drug to help with the side effect(s) rather than take a person off the drug causing the problem in the first place.
So long as a patient isn't severely depressed who cares if they have no libido, right?
I think a doctor’s priorities are:
Big pharma doesn’t get paid as much this way, and not all doctors are competent or ethical. We’ve all seen examples of both I imagine.
In my experience I would change the word "are" in your first statement to "should be"