The Difficulty in Getting Help for Mental Health

What do you call a group of fish? by kdinuraj

After my two years with clinical depression, I finally understood that I needed medical attention. Although I have always looked for help, I generally have had to be self-diagnosed. Most medical doctors don’t recognize depression in their patients. If a patient says that s/he is depressed, many times the doctor will ask the patient if they need medication. This turning the diagnosis over to the patient doesn’t happen in most of fields of medicine.

I think the difficulty for doctors is caused by patients seeking drugs for an escape from reality rather than for the need of chemical imbalance. The other large difficulty for medicating mental problems is the fact that it may take several different prescriptions to find the right anti-depression (anxiety, etc.) drug to work for each patient. this slows down the rapid delivery system of getting medications to heal all as we have become a nation of “instant fixes”. This selection of drugs is difficult as any of the drugs for mental illness take 4-6 weeks to be effective in the system.So if one doesn’t work, the next one prescribed will be 4-6 weeks also. The patient feels that the doctor doesn’t know what she/he is doing so many times the patient returns to the self-medication he/she has found to work.

So most of the population who suffer from a chemical imbalance continue to be self-medicated (alcohol, other drugs, sex, work, food, etc.

Caught in the web? You need help, not labels by Todd Essig

Get help from Mental Health America

Mental help net community

Internet mental health has a self-diagnosis section