Absolutely. I have been under one form or another of psychiatric care for - hunh - 30+ years? Yes. Back in the days when MD psychiatrists actually engaged in forms of 55-minute psychotherapy. In the present day it seems that the usual practice in the U.S. is visiting a PhD therapist at regular intervals and only visiting an MD psychiatrist every three months, for 15-minutes, to get scripts for meds.

I spent years (three) in a mental hospital, seeing MD/shrinks daily. More years spent (eight) on a psych wing in a nursing home, with no therapist/therapy save for a weekly 15-minute visit with an MD/shrink. I did no haggling during my first+ year in the mental hospital - I did not speak (adult selective mutism). Into my second year and with ongoing ECT sessions, dangerous combinations of drugs and a shrink who unraveled the mystery with one sentence, I began getting better. I learned to haggle - a survival technique - I learned to manipulate. I walked out (finally!) of the hospital a completely different person than had entered. That wasn’t a good thing. I had a need to regain the best parts, the good parts, of my personality.

I tried, and failed, to do so during the next two years. Settling into the psych wing, I just gave up. With no help from psychiatry, I had an unusual epiphany during my sixth year: I became an argumentative, manipulative arsehole (again?) instead of a whiny little beotch. Two years later, I wheeled out.

On my own, now, for six years, I’m in “the usual practice in the U.S.” My PhD/Psychology therapist goes out of his way to show his ignorance of psychopharmacology whilst my MD/shrink is terrific at ‘taking chances’ to prescribe unusual/excessive combinations of meds to rein in the more tragic symptoms. I think that she possesses a kind of ‘everyone deserves a few minutes of happiness and damn convention’ attitude.

But she insists that her patients seek immediate treatment for erections lasting more than four hours. ‘Four hours or more’ seems to be the gold standard for ED meds and psych meds. Go figure.

So, psychiatry - from talk-therapy to psychotropic medications - has been a part of my life for the majority of my life and even with some rocky patches, yes, it has helped me.

I’m not sure what is going on upstairs just now, not certain that I’m doing what I should be doing. Unfortunate priapism in place of wasted time.

Time. I measure days in teapots. I measure time by how a body sways. I measure weeks by the touch that she taught, the touch that she gives.

Note: psychiatry has not cured me of my dreadful thoughts but I hurt fewer people, now, and with less severity than in the past. And I have some control over my delusions and mania which are surely good things? Psychiatry gave me the weapons, the WMD’s, to fight debilitating depression, too. Tools to claw my way out of the abyss.

How can mental health professionals benefit more than the patients that they treat? Monetarily? Psychologically? Quara is a rigged system. Whilst experts answer the best formulated generic questions, anyone is free to answer the most difficult. I doubt that the forums attract many people with ongoing mental disorders - no ‘expert’ psychotics, ya know?

Are you a bitter ex-patient? You’re posting in the bipolar forum so I’m guessing that you were diagnosed as bipolar in the first (me) or second (others) degree? Do you feel that psychiatry failed in treating your mental disorder?