Thanks for sharing this. I'm sorry that you've been so poorly treated. You deserve better. Very many people do.
I recently read Van Der Kolk's "The Body Keeps The Score", a book about trauma and its effects. It's a masterwork, and I'll be thinking about it for the next year. But one of the big themes for me is the extent to which he, a well-placed psychiatrist with a strong mix of clinical and research work, had trouble getting the medical establishment to go beyond outdated categories and marginally effective treatments. It's heartbreaking to think of all the patients so poorly supported by the existing system.
It made me realize that as far as mental health goes, we're living in an age that people will later look at with horror. It makes me think of Semmelweis [1], who had the then-radical idea that surgeons should wash their hands before cutting people open. Many in the establishment mocked him. How dare he call them dirty! He ended up being committed to an asylum where he was beaten; he died 2 weeks later from a gangrenous wound. Eventually people realized he was right, but too late for him. And for who knows how many deaths.
I recently read Van Der Kolk's "The Body Keeps The Score", a book about trauma and its effects. It's a masterwork, and I'll be thinking about it for the next year. But one of the big themes for me is the extent to which he, a well-placed psychiatrist with a strong mix of clinical and research work, had trouble getting the medical establishment to go beyond outdated categories and marginally effective treatments. It's heartbreaking to think of all the patients so poorly supported by the existing system.
It made me realize that as far as mental health goes, we're living in an age that people will later look at with horror. It makes me think of Semmelweis [1], who had the then-radical idea that surgeons should wash their hands before cutting people open. Many in the establishment mocked him. How dare he call them dirty! He ended up being committed to an asylum where he was beaten; he died 2 weeks later from a gangrenous wound. Eventually people realized he was right, but too late for him. And for who knows how many deaths.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis