The idea that the entire psychiatric community wouldn't be completely on the side of the author is one of the reasons that I have such little faith in their field.
The reason being is that the underlying condition could always be worked on after first taking the small, practical steps to dramatically reduce the impact of the problem.
I have personally experienced situations like this and it was so frustrating until I realised that I had to take personal responsibility, because help wasn't coming from within the system.
The impact isn't the same, but I've been guilty of doing exactly the same thing with software bugs. "Sure, we could just do this little workaround and get you back up and running, but there's a reason for this and we would be better off in the long run investing in a real fix."
I do have a limit, at least, after which I'll go for the quick fix and then try to follow up with a broader investigation. Depends on how severe the issue is, too.
Ah yeah, don't get me started on my things - I can't stand anything but inbox zero, I can't stand having anything in Trash (whether desktop or mailbox), luckily this is related only to computer and my smartphone and doesn't affect my daily life.
Doctors are just tech support for the human body. They listen to your complaint and offer up their best guess diagnosis based on what's helped previous customers with the same symptoms, but they have limited information on the system they support, the documentation is spotty and sometimes contradictory, there's a ton of bugs, and they have no escalation path because the engineer who designed the system quit ages ago and left no contact info.
I have been misdiagnosed so many times for health issues, I feel like doctors need to specialize within domains and they are only allowed to practice within that domain. So much advice given out by general practitioners is useless and only treats symptoms of health conditions. It literally took me 4 years to figure out a health issue as a bounced from doctor to doctor as they all scratched their head. Some doctors even made incorrect diagnoses which lead to treatment which was actively harmful to my condition, it would have been better to not see those doctors at all since they set back my recovery by months.
We dont let electrical engineers build bridges so why do we give doctors so much freedom in their practice?
In my experience most doctors are pretty useless trying to solve a difficult problem. I had my daughter's colon biopsied before someone suggested using a hypoallergenic formula.
Variation from doctor to doctor is also wild the reactions you get out of people. Our daughter had a dairy allergy and we had observed after cutting it out her getting better. Our original pediatrician basically had the attitude of "well since you self-diagnosed this and it wasn't officially by me I'm going to largely ignore it and proceed as normal."
We switched pediatricians and the difference was amazing. The response was "I have listed to all that you have said and I agree with your assessment that she has an issue with dairy. Here are some options for her diet going forward". The difference between fighting a battle to feel heard versus feeling like someone is on your team solving a problem is incredible.
Doctor 1: "Kids have all kinds of stomach problems all the time. The parents always say it's dairy or gluten. The parents don't know anything, so I'm going to ignore them."
Doctor 2: "Kids have all kinds of stomach problems all the time. The parents always say it's dairy or gluten. This is probably going to go away on its own, but the parents will keep insisting I do some thing until it does. I will tell them they are on the right track and send them off. "
Doctors have to play a whole metagame beyond just trying to figure out what might be causing the symptoms their patients are presenting with.
I really detest this idea that blatant manipulation is necessary from people we are supposed to be able trust. How about this instead, where the doctor provides information and a plan of action instead of manipulation:
Doctor 3: "Stomach problems are common, they may or may not be caused by the most popular triggers, and they might go away on their own by coincidence. Here's the decision tree we can follow, which will let us know if we need to do more..."
Plenty of doctors do explain all of this, but people hear what they want: did the doc affirm or contest my theory? Did they "do anything"? (recommend surgery, prescription, diet, etc)
> In my experience most doctors are pretty useless trying to solve a difficult problem
This applies to nearly every profession. Most people are average at their jobs and most people aren't that great at consistently solving the harder (or hardest) problems their job presents.
It's as true for doctors as it is software developers or truck drivers or teachers.
That's why they should do triage. If they can't figure out the problem, at least be able to refer a person to someone they think can. If they're not willing to do that then they're probably more interested in their own practice (can make more money by fumbling around) than helping patients.
I have a great deal of respect for someone who says "I can't help you, but that person over there can" and turns out to be right. I'd gladly try them again with a different problem.
It's hard to imagine anything that a GP can help you with if you're an adult with Google, other than giving you the prescriptions you know you need. They and anyone involved in sports medicine are about as good as WebMD if not worse. Internal medicine specialists and such are still useful though.
But if you dramatically improve the patient's life right now, it will probably be a lot easier to treat the underlying problem, without the added worries of stress and a failing career.
The reason being is that the underlying condition could always be worked on after first taking the small, practical steps to dramatically reduce the impact of the problem.
I have personally experienced situations like this and it was so frustrating until I realised that I had to take personal responsibility, because help wasn't coming from within the system.