Posted by mtdewcmu on March 9, 2011, at 2:24:46
In reply to NYT Article - Psychiatrist's rationalization$$, posted by jane d on March 9, 2011, at 0:08:58
Yes, most psychiatrists today don't do talk therapy. The reason that people pay for them is that they're the ones that can prescribe meds, unlike social workers and psychologists.
I don't understand why someone would need to go to medical school in order to do talk therapy. Back when Freudian psychoanalysis was still popular, there was actually a lot to learn in order to do talk therapy. So you could make more of a case that a therapist needed to be highly educated. But, most of what is learned in medical school is irrelevant to talk therapy, and, given the exorbitantly high cost of medical school, it's hard to imagine psychiatrists being able to do talk therapy for a reasonable price.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/health/policy/06doctors.html?ref=health&src=me&pagewanted=all
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> Also the comments at: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/less-talk-more-medicine/
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> There was an interesting, and fairly critical, profile in last Sunday's NY Times of a psychiatrist describing why he switched from doing talk therapy to just doing 15 minute med checks.
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> My own problem with this is not that he is using medication instead of talk therapy although that is the focus of a lot of the critical comments. I believe that the right medication at the right time can be a wonderful thing. But I can't see how he can actually do a decent job providing that in the limited time he is spending with his patients.
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> I found this article horrifying. The psychiatrist I saw didn't do this but he certainly sounds like many that have been described here. Is this really what most of them are like today? If so, why would anyone pay for this?
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poster:mtdewcmu
thread:980286
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110220/msgs/980290.html