Honestly after studying psychology for years I was extremely disappointed. To me you have a couple of parts to it. The scientific parts with neuroscience where they actually get real results and everything is on the up and up. Problem is you need machines that can cost hundreds of thousands just to run so the whole thing runs in a experimental and completely impractical way. It's just not yet useful to the majority of people who need help. On the other hand you have something that mimics sociology where you just kind of make educated guesses and do broad studies that can be interpreted in a load of different ways.
For the treatment side you have a bizarre mix of the two, you have the trial and error guesswork from what the studies seem to suggest could work. On its own it might help but really your just slowing down the issues and trying to keep the person in check with talking therapy. Then you have a variety of drugs that are an absolute pain in the ass to get right. For example anti-depressants can take weeks to work then leave the person worse off than when they started, then you have weeks of waiting for the drugs effects to ware off. Then the onto the next drug. Without doing the science the trial and error is just inevitable.
Psychology as a medical discipline is just a clusterfuck. You start with a doctor that rarely has much in depth knowledge of disorders. So that doctor has to guess which problem you have based on a bunch of symptoms that can mean anything from Schizophrenia, anxiety, depression or a physical condition with psychological effects. Usually the easiest option is just to pick one to make them feel better now they have a name for the thing and give them anti-depressants as they tend to nuke some of the symptoms for some with mild issues. Now assuming it's more than something that can be brushed off with a few days off and some happy pills the real clusterfuck begins. The patient now gets to enjoy being passed from person to person making up a new diagnoses. Here you get put on a waiting list (Years long) for therapy and you get to have new drugs with all new side effects each month until you either get sick of coming back for help or are lucky enough to find the right drug for you.
Way I see it psychology is just nowhere near ready to be effective in treating people effectively. Your average doctor doesn't have the knowledge to diagnose the myriad of disorders and the quest to fix an imbalance is years long and full of awful shit. My advice personally would be to talk to a councillor not a psychiatrist, I think the actual act of speaking your thoughts out loud will help and councillors are cheaper and easier to find. If you're really struggling take the drug quest but do a lot of research and take a friend or family member to help keep an eye on you and help you find the best one for you.
For the treatment side you have a bizarre mix of the two, you have the trial and error guesswork from what the studies seem to suggest could work. On its own it might help but really your just slowing down the issues and trying to keep the person in check with talking therapy. Then you have a variety of drugs that are an absolute pain in the ass to get right. For example anti-depressants can take weeks to work then leave the person worse off than when they started, then you have weeks of waiting for the drugs effects to ware off. Then the onto the next drug. Without doing the science the trial and error is just inevitable.
Psychology as a medical discipline is just a clusterfuck. You start with a doctor that rarely has much in depth knowledge of disorders. So that doctor has to guess which problem you have based on a bunch of symptoms that can mean anything from Schizophrenia, anxiety, depression or a physical condition with psychological effects. Usually the easiest option is just to pick one to make them feel better now they have a name for the thing and give them anti-depressants as they tend to nuke some of the symptoms for some with mild issues. Now assuming it's more than something that can be brushed off with a few days off and some happy pills the real clusterfuck begins. The patient now gets to enjoy being passed from person to person making up a new diagnoses. Here you get put on a waiting list (Years long) for therapy and you get to have new drugs with all new side effects each month until you either get sick of coming back for help or are lucky enough to find the right drug for you.
Way I see it psychology is just nowhere near ready to be effective in treating people effectively. Your average doctor doesn't have the knowledge to diagnose the myriad of disorders and the quest to fix an imbalance is years long and full of awful shit. My advice personally would be to talk to a councillor not a psychiatrist, I think the actual act of speaking your thoughts out loud will help and councillors are cheaper and easier to find. If you're really struggling take the drug quest but do a lot of research and take a friend or family member to help keep an eye on you and help you find the best one for you.
