I looked at her, better dressed than most of the folks at the clinic where she was seen, with an open mouth. I had to take a few extra minutes to figure out what I was going to say next. In case you have not guessed, that is pretty far from my usual state.
“I have a chemical imbalance,” she said. She looked a little like Sharon Osbourne, hip and trendy but expensively dressed. ”He gave me some medicines that really helped, like Xanax and Ativan, and either of those would be just fine.”
I freely admit that psychiatric diagnosis and treatment have a long way to go to meet either the organic precision of the surgical specialties or the subjective enthusiasm of the non-prescribing mental health professionals, such as psychologists or psychotherapists. But there are practitioners out there who are either so indifferent or so pressured that they rattle off words without meaning and give prescriptions that hinder more than help.
Filed under Diagnosis by on Jan 12th, 2010. Comment.

