how has psychiatry changed in the past 10 years?

Answer 1

The young people accept help much more than the older folks.

The younger people are defined now with ADHD, ADD, depression, and other diagnoses to help them. Unfortunately some are cutting/slashing/self-mutilating themselves much more than ever before this time. Young people are more willing to open up and tell it like it is. Young people don't care so much what people think. They want to get out "WHAT'S BUGGING THEM".

My generation (unfortunately) was taught to hide reaching out to others except your family. We were taught that mental health problems were different from medical problems. We were taught to be ashamed of mental health problem. We were taught stresss can be overcome if you try hard enough. We were taught wrong!

It is much better with the young attitude of "Just Get IT Out, and then get help for What's Bugging Me". It's better in the me generation that it was in mine.

THANK GOD for that improvement.

Answer 2

I think that one of the biggest changes in psychiatric medicine that has taken place over the last ten years is the increased use and greater understanding of how the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) and Selective Serotonin and Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SSNRI) drugs work on the brain's chemistry, and understanding how neurotransmitters work within the human brain.

The psychiatric medical community has a greater understanding of the pharmacology of mental illness now, and has more tools to study mental illness non-invasively (e.g., CAT scans and MRI and other imaging techniques that can show how the living brain works without requiring invasive surgery to put in sensors. The psychiatric medical community is also starting to have a much greater understanding of the role of genes in mental illness.

Coupled with the advances in medicine and imaging techniques has come political advances that make it more likely that insurance companies will fully cover psychiatric treatment for mental illness. As any family that has a mentally ill loved one knows, all the advances in the world are of no use to those afflicted with mental illness if there isn't money to pay for them. For a long time, many advocacy groups like NAMI have been working and lobbying to make sure there is "parity" for insurance coverage for mental illness treatments-- i.e., the same assurance of insurance coverage for mental illness as for any other kind of illness.

The psychiatric medical community and advocacy groups continue to lobby for more effective treatment availability to the mentally ill as well as to continue research into the causes and treatments of mental illness.

Answer 3

to the worse: more and more social problems are disguised as medical problems and more disorders are 'created' for the purpose of the commercialisation of our distress. Look around you: When our personal values make us regard difference in others as a sign of illness and disease for the purpose of maintaing a certain social order and/or making money then that is the death of a science. And psychiatry is up to its ears in such practices. I should know.

Answer 4

Lots more psychiatrists to prescribe lots more drugs to lots more crazy people.