{"id":42211,"date":"2013-12-10T10:11:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T15:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=42211"},"modified":"2013-12-10T11:19:53","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T16:19:53","slug":"an-example-for-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2013\/12\/10\/an-example-for-us-all\/","title":{"rendered":"an example for us all…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One thing I’ve noticed in life is that the most desirable trait in other people, almost a magnet, is humility – people who are right-sized about what they know and what they are. And yet it might well be the most impossible thing of all to achieve in one’s own life. This morning, we heard President Obama use the African word Ubuntu<\/em>, "I am, because you are<\/em>", "I am me, because you are you<\/em>" – meant to remind us of our interconnectedness. But there’s another less lofty perspective. Our self image is grounded in the reflection from others, and the temptation to self-aggrandizement is inescapable – to become the expert<\/em>. We are, after all, the center of the universe, at least from the vantage of our own perceptions, and we startle when that expertise, that centrality, is challenged. It’s captured in the saying, "I changed my mind<\/em>," acknowledging the gulf we have to cross to see things in a different way.<\/p>\n

Sandra Steingard is a psychiatrist in Vermont, working in a system where many of the patients have psychotic illnesses, acute and chronic. Almost all psychiatrists trained in such a system, but most of us move on to careers working with less troubled patients. I was tempted to stay. in spite of other compelling interests, but the lack of resources was overwhelming. And frankly, I was too confused by the dilemmas involved in treating those patients to find a comfort zone, much less anything like expertise<\/em>. Not long ago, Sandy noticed that in my writing, I spoke of Schizophrenia as an entity, a position she’s moved away from. I asked her to do a guest blog on the topic and she gave us a fascinating narrative of her own struggles with the same point [a guest post from Sandy Steingard…<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Sandra Steingard<\/a> writes for Mad in America<\/a>, Robert Whitaker’s website with a wide variety of bloggers who question the wisdom of current expert opinions in psychiatry. If you’ve read Whitaker’s books<\/a>, you know that his central theme is a challenge to the long termed use of antipsychotic medications, based not only on their toxicity, but on outcome. From her perspective as a person in the field actually involved in the daily treatment of these patients, Whitaker’s book had a profound effect on Sandy – it changed her mind<\/em>. And for her, this isn’t just a rhetorical topic – it’s something that came to inform her everyday work with the challenging patients she sees. Today, she brings the story of how that change is playing out in her clinical work to the pages of the Health & Science section of the Washington Post<\/em> [A psychiatrist thinks some patients are better off without antipsychotic drugs<\/span><\/a>]. <\/p>\n

The piece itself is both a descriptive history of the antipsychotic drugs and the story of her own relationship with the expert recommendations for treatment. The mind-changing<\/em> for her came from Robert Whitaker’s book describing studies where antipsychotic medications were used for the management of acute episodes but not for maintenance [preventing relapse] leading to better long termed outcomes. Like many of her blog posts on Mad in America and here, rather than take the position of expert, she writes in the first person of how her changed mind<\/em> is effecting her practice – and that’s why I started with humility.<\/p>\n

Instead of changing from being an expert<\/em> who recommended long term antipsychotic treatment to her patients into an expert <\/em>who recommended doing it a different way, she decided to do something else. In her words:<\/div>\n
\n
Two years ago, I decided to invite my patients into this conversation. I explain to them what I have read and what conclusions I have drawn, as well as the conflicting views of other psychiatrists.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
That decision to take the issue directly to her patients is both humility<\/em> and just plain good doctoring<\/em> – an example for us all. She goes on to tell us how it’s working out…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing I’ve noticed in life is that the most desirable trait in other people, almost a magnet, is humility – people who are right-sized about what they know and what they are. And yet it might well be the most impossible thing of all to achieve in one’s own life. This morning, we heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42211"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42224,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42211\/revisions\/42224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}