Posted by cumulative on January 14, 2008, at 23:24:03
In reply to There's not nearly enough info for you to judge... » cumulative, posted by gardenergirl on January 14, 2008, at 16:40:30
>whether someone's physician is "competent" or not. You have a tiny amount of data here.
Excuse me, this is more than enough:
"my psychiatrist who has basically said that I've tried all the main antidepressants and there isn't many other medications left worth trying."
"Over the past five years I have been on:
30mg Seroxat/Paroxetine
60mg Prozac
100mg Lustral/Zoloft
225mg Efexor/Venlafaxine">And frankly, the construct of "competence" is not a single "is or is not" question.
Competence/incompetence can certainly be viewed as a spectrum, but it can also be used quite usefully as a binary opposition -- for instance when someone in a professional, high-standards job that involves the life and death of patients, and where the member of the profession swears an oath to, among other things, to do no harm and to prescribe for the good of the patient, fails their profession and fails their oath in telling a vulnerable depressed patient that they have tried "most of the major antidepressants" when they have only taken a very narrow (albeit popular and well-advertised in doctor's offices) set of them. This is harmful both in the sense that there are many, many other drugs and some could help, and psychologically -- it damages hope, which is horrid.
>Competent or imcompetent at what is the key question.
Prescribing medication and knowing medication, which is one of the main functions of doctors. If a prescribing doctor is dysfunctional in these categories, he/she is incompetent in his/her profession. Plain and simple, right from the dictionary definition. This is the sort of behavior that leads some people to generalize things like "all psychiatrists are bad" and self-medicate (and note, I don't use this term "self-medicate" in an inherently negative context here).
>But then, I'm sure you know this already.
On the contrary, I think most people here are going to understand what I pointed out to be very reasonable. Thank you for helping me clear things up.
poster:cumulative
thread:806208
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080114/msgs/806586.html