All My Personality Traits
Being on psych this month, learning and reviewing all the psych diagnoses, you can’t help but fearfully self-inspect for psychosis, personality disorders and the like. Look what I learned in school today: I’m a schizoid narcissist with passive-aggressive tendencies and a history of anxiety problems!
I’m really enjoying psych, and I wonder if it’s because I can relate to some degree. I think most of my classmates enjoy it, but some just don’t, and perhaps it’s because they’re just not neurotic enough, or don’t have a good sense of how challenging life can be with mental health problems.
Just a thought.
My wife tells me I was rather unpleasant to live with during psyche. Fortunately the rotation lasted only 6 weeks.
Flea
The real reason why you’re enjoying psych so much is because you’re surrounded by those psych residents–you know, those charming, witty, intelligent people who possess endless empathy and warmth…. ;) (By the way, thanks for the kind words you left at the UBC site!)
I think most med students are OCPD. I have a healthy dose of schizoid and anxious/avoidant PD in there too. Everyone’s got something!
When I first signed up for my first cognitive psych lecture fairly recently, I was really doing so to better understand the kind of person I was. After taking some exams - self assessment tests - I still wasn’t sure if the “diagnoses” were thorough.
Eventually I was hired at a local neuroscience research institute when I lived in Ohio. Shortly after, I decided during a lunch break to talk to a few graduate neuro/students and a long-time career employee about self-assessment (grad student’s supervisor). Over a months period of lunch breaks and being evaluated by experienced students and workers…Well, it’s needless to say that I had several “issues” - many of which assigned to me as a narcissist; [moderate] dependent; obsessive-compulsive; passive-aggressive……yeah, and so on.
The good news: I finished the lecture since then, and I haven’t looked back. I actually prefer to evaluate others and do a comparison that way. Being told that I was this and that, or at risk for this and that by anyone, wasn’t what I wanted to hear - and I didn’t like hearing that I had “issues” or “risks”….hmmm is that me expressing my narcissitic ways?
Well, I have a few years before I enter medical school (2.5 or 3 yrs. - not sure - I plan on studying abroad at some point). Anyways, I suppose I’ll prepare myself for another grueling self-evaluation for the upcoming years.
Hah. Try testing for learning disabilities! I have a hearing impairment that wasn’t diagnosed until 4th grade, and besides my ADD, it turns out I’ve got Non-verbal Learning Disorder, which hadn’t even been defined when I was in school! (My family did know there was *something* we hadn’t figured out….)
I thought you might be interested in psych from the consumer’s viewpoint.
About five years ago my wife had a very traumatic experience probably caused by cardiologist who perscribed Amiodarone to “correct” her atrial fib even though he had been warned about her iodine allergy.
The short of it was she ended up with classic GAD/panic attacks and pretty severe depression. Her GP tried to help her as her first symptoms were severe gastric pains, etc.
The GP finally decided that the problem was psychological and perscribed Buspar (an expensive placebo). She finally ended up in the psych ward of the local hospital, came under the care of various psychiatrists & psychologists and has now has the depression and anxiety under fairly good control.
My reason for writing this is to comment on the tendency of GPs to perscribe whatever the pharma detail person has dropped off samples of without really knowing very much about the various psych meds.
These meds are ideosyncratic, have complicated side effects, and mostly a low cure rate, but they are handed out by the bucketfull. Even some psychiatrists, who should know better, see themselves as expensive pill-pushers.
My wife had one, who actually didn’t want to see her - he worked strictly through the cadre of psychiatric social workers her staffed his office with.
If I sound a little dissatisfied, it’s because I really think this is an area of medicine where a good deal more instruction is needed.