Psychiatry
This is a very depressing posting for me. This posting will make you start to think about the different people around you and understand why they act the way the act... and then you start diagnosing them with psychiatric illnesses. They are amongst us.

Heck, there are even movies about these people, and even real life celebrities who have psychiatric illnesses. Some professions just needs a person to be so, accountants should have a compulsive disorder, lighthouse watch should be a schizoid, actors be hysterionic... They are more prevalant than you think!

Anyway, back to my posting... Psychiatry is a very long process, from long history takings, long management, and long list of problems and treatment.

Long History. Tomorrow, I will be sitting for an exam, that will test my presentation skills and diagnosing and management. Today, I sat for one that tested my interviewing skills. I failed miserably. I declare the session unjust, but I know where I went wrong. I was probably to familiar with the patient and knew her diagnosis before I sat down to interview her. That led me to only have a checklist and not ask in detail about her change. That cost me dearly. Depressing.

Long List of Problems. The list is almost endless. Mood disorders - Depression, mania, depression with psychotic symptoms, mania with psychotic symptoms, hypomanic, hypothymic, cyclothymic, bipolar I, bipolar II, etc... Anxiety disorders - OCD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, social phobia, specific phobia, agoraphobia, panic attack, etc... Schizophrenia. Schizophreniaform. Schizoaffective. brief Schizo... Drug induced... Sleep disorders... Sexual disorders (which reminds me of what we did in Moral Studies; necrophilia, zoophilia, paedophilia, homophilia, etc...) ... erm... that's all I can remember apart from the Dementia/Delirium and other medical causes for psychiatric problems.

Long List of Treatment. Each grouping has it's specific drug, but since each disorder can overlap into the other, the drugs will also overlap. It's just too long a list to do here. And that's just the drugs. There is also the other Therapies, like CBT, ECT, hypnotism, acupucture, etc...

Long List of Management. I am getting tired of listing down stuff. It's a long list. There are many ways to manage psychiatric patients.

The only difference in the outcome is whether the patient complies or not. Some do. Some don't know they need to. Some don't get better anyway. So it's sad.

It's hard not to get depressed in here.