When Charles Schultz died without ever having Charlie Brown kick that football it felt.... right. When you grow up as a Cub fan and a Catholic in a city where winter challenges your will to live every single year you are conditioned to not just accept but to embrace your suffering. You are taught that "Yes, the universe is trying to destroy you, and the pain and the failure will never relent until you die, but you can offer that suffering to God and this will not only purify you, it will sanctify you." What Cubs fan could not relate to Charlie Brown, forever trying to kick the football and forever failing?
I had absorbed into my identity the sincere belief that before the Cubs won the world series I would die or major league baseball would just end due to lack of interest or a major global catastrophe like a meteor strike or alien attack. I am not joking when I say that I am far more mentally prepared for the zombie apocalypse than I am for this reality where the Cubs just won the World Series. That being said just like Charlie Brown every year the Cubs had even a sniff of making the playoffs I ran full speed pulled back my leg and whiffed. I was at game 7 in 2003 and watching the Marlin's celebrate on the field at Wrigley tore something in me. Still with Dusty, with Lou I ran and I kicked and I fell and it felt...right.
Every day I work with people who are struggling with depression. People who balance on the knife's edge of whether or not they should kill themselves. Most of them can look at their lives and point to a great deal of evidence that the universe hates them. They have been abused, molested, betrayed by their families or their bodies, they have known a sticky corrosive pain that eats away at your soul and your will that we call depression. Many of them have beaten it back once or twice but they face each day in the knowledge that it may return.
This weekend a former client, who should probably be in a hospital, texted me "They say people like Robin Williams lost his battle, but maybe he won it." Her words stab through me like an icicle from my navel through my heart. I can't lose her. I can't lose any of them, and there are so many.
My response to her, to them, is a broken record. Endure and better days will come. Life will be hard and it will be painful but it will also be wonderful and worth it. Ignore what your experience has told you is true and look to the examples I show you of people like you who have pushed back the darkness and live now in the light.
But they hold up the Judas's of Robin and Ned Vizzini. Before you think me harsh for using that label allow me to explain that I see Judas as figure who is tragic not evil. Even if I had known these men were going to go I would have loved them and held them to the last as Christ did. Still I feel betrayed by them because they were my allies in combating depression and in providing hope. Ned's book It's Kind of a Funny Story, and so many of Robin's characters, particularly Sean Maguire from Good Will Hunting were tools I went to regularly and shaped my work and my life.
So there I sat last night next to my wife, when I wasn't shifting position to try to get just the right amount of luck to keep Baez from swinging at warm up pitches from the bull pen. My sister and I texting back and forth pessimistic jibes designed to keep our hope from growing too large, tensing our collective muscles for the whiff as Lucy pulls away with a smile.
And then hell froze over. It HAPPENED. I was smiling with tears in my eyes, my neighborhood erupted in fireworks, never mind that it was midnight, we were glowing, we were in numbed awe. Internally the earth buckled and the temple curtain split, reality came crashing down. I stumbled into the kitchen and made my son's lunch for today and drifted back and forth to the TV not knowing what to do with myself.
A reporter asked Joe Maddon how he kept the focus on this year in spite of 108 years of history of failure. What I absorbed of his response seemed to me the key to combating depression. I will paraphrase: I respect the past and tradition but there is no place for superstition and curses. This is now.
Joe Maddon built a team that did not run from their past but would not be defined by it. Unlike most baseball people he spit the superstition out of his club house the way he spit it out of his mouth, with disdain. What I heard in his words was a belief that the universe does not hate you, the universe does not care one way or the other. If you are failing to kick the football stop deciding that is your fate and get a different fucking holder!
I understand why a person would choose to build a universe that hates them, because as much as it sucks at least it is predictable. Perhaps the only thing worse than swinging and missing is being surprised that you missed. If we can convince ourselves that we will always suffer then we will never be ambushed. But we will also never win.
The Cubs did not fail to win for 108 years because they were cursed, they failed because until recently only two teams from the national league even made the playoffs and most teams had better organizations with more invested ownership. The weight of the years did become a self fulfilling prophecy that impacted players and managers and that seemed true even last night but the players destiny was always in their own hands.
Depression is real but if we can go forward each day and "Try not to suck" we can transcend the identity we have created. Cubs fans are happy to let go of the moral superiority that came from being the longest suffering. A decade from now when the Cubs are just another team will we have lost something? I hope so. I hope we will stop finding silver linings and preparing ourselves to endure the torment of life. I hope the legacy of this Cubs team, and what I will bring to my clients from this experience is EXPECT TO WIN. Trying not to suck, is to stop protecting yourself from failure by preparing for it, because it still sucks.
Sean Maguire described the Carlton Fisk home run as a pivotal moment in his life that he sacrificed for love. Baseball is not just entertainment in the background of our lives, who we choose to be fans of, particularly in a city that has two teams, is a declaration of our values and who we choose to be. White Sox fans have been the down trodden bitter grinders who stick their thumb in the eye of the universe and will tell you that sunshine and joy are for the soft. Cubs fans have been the pathetic half way optimists, but both groups have been united in a Stark clan knowledge that "Winter is Coming."
If Robin Williams were here I think he would have asked us all to look to Sean's example more than his own. To buy that "winning lottery ticket" but more importantly to heal from our pain and go back out and embrace life.
Thank you Joe Maddon for delivering an entire nation of fans from the tyranny of a superstitious universe. This morning everything is different, any future is possible, and this is no going back. Try not to suck.
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Saturday, October 2, 2010
How do I explain my depression?
(This blog is intended to inform and entertain at the same time. It will do that for more people if you follow it because people like you. You are a role model. Please follow the blog, and if you have a question e-mail me.)
Question: I can't win. Every fall I start to get depressed and it happens at other times in the year. Sometimes I just need to cry or be sad but my boyfriend feels like a failure if I'm not happy. My parents think I'm just a drama queen because when I'm with my friends or my boyfriend I can be happy and laughing but then when it is time to get out of bed for school sometimes I just can't do it. My boyfriend wants me to tell him how I"m feeling and I want to be honest with him, but then we fight because I don't want to hear a pep talk, I just want him to be there and love me. How do I get them all to understand that this is real and I can't help it, but it isn't anybody's fault or job to fix it? Sometimes I just need to cry and be sad for awhile.
Answer: Psycho-education for families and friends is the most overlooked part of successful mental health treatment. As a therapist usually my first job is to get my client to understand what you just said: This is a disease, it isn't about fault and it isn't about fixing it, it is about learning to manage the symptoms and get on with your life. This process usually takes me a couple of years so that fact that you are already there is a great sign.
There are four methods I would suggest to get the people you care about to understand what you need and what you don't: direct conversation, writing them a letter, conversation with a third party, book or movie.
If you are going to use any of the first three methods your first step is figuring out what you want and planning how you want to go into the conversation/explanation. The format I suggest is: 1.) Tell them what you are feeling 2.) identify what you think is triggering that feeling 3.) tell them what you are afraid will happen as a result of the conversation/letter 4.) tell them what you hope will happen next (with concrete examples of what you would like them to do instead of what they have been doing).
When dealing with men conversations often go off the rails when talking about feelings because the man often wants the feelings to make sense (which feelings are not obliged to do), and/or because he has not been given direct instructions on what he is supposed to DO. When men do not have an action plan they get nervous, especially if there is a crying woman in the room. If you give your boyfriend a manual and tell him what his role is in helping you he is likely to be more relaxed and follow instructions.
I generally suggest writing a letter which you then read aloud or have a trusted friend check for potential land mines that will cause the reader to be defensive. After you have given the letter and time for the reader to digest follow up with a conversation for clarification.
Sometimes past arguments and relationships represent a block to communication. Perhaps your parents cannot take information coming from their daughter seriously. In these cases if you are working with a therapist it is a great idea to get them involved for a joint session where they help explain what is going on for you. Sometimes that masters degree will make the same words that you already used sound more real to a parent or boyfriend.
Finally if you have read a book, seen a movie, or even heard a song which really captures the way you feel, try to expose the person to that media. Sometimes Hollywood does a much better job than we ever could in explaining the way we are feeling, and while most guys are not rushing out to rent "Girl Interrupted" if you ask your man to watch it with you, he probably will.
None of these people can know what it feels like inside you, even if they have dealt with depression themselves. They don't need to know and if they are lucky they will never have to. They do need to be educated, however, that even if there is no reason for them your feelings are real and they matter. If they want you to be as healthy as possible they will not question your feelings or make you feel bad for having them, they will just support you in the way that works best for you.
Question: I can't win. Every fall I start to get depressed and it happens at other times in the year. Sometimes I just need to cry or be sad but my boyfriend feels like a failure if I'm not happy. My parents think I'm just a drama queen because when I'm with my friends or my boyfriend I can be happy and laughing but then when it is time to get out of bed for school sometimes I just can't do it. My boyfriend wants me to tell him how I"m feeling and I want to be honest with him, but then we fight because I don't want to hear a pep talk, I just want him to be there and love me. How do I get them all to understand that this is real and I can't help it, but it isn't anybody's fault or job to fix it? Sometimes I just need to cry and be sad for awhile.
Answer: Psycho-education for families and friends is the most overlooked part of successful mental health treatment. As a therapist usually my first job is to get my client to understand what you just said: This is a disease, it isn't about fault and it isn't about fixing it, it is about learning to manage the symptoms and get on with your life. This process usually takes me a couple of years so that fact that you are already there is a great sign.
There are four methods I would suggest to get the people you care about to understand what you need and what you don't: direct conversation, writing them a letter, conversation with a third party, book or movie.
If you are going to use any of the first three methods your first step is figuring out what you want and planning how you want to go into the conversation/explanation. The format I suggest is: 1.) Tell them what you are feeling 2.) identify what you think is triggering that feeling 3.) tell them what you are afraid will happen as a result of the conversation/letter 4.) tell them what you hope will happen next (with concrete examples of what you would like them to do instead of what they have been doing).
When dealing with men conversations often go off the rails when talking about feelings because the man often wants the feelings to make sense (which feelings are not obliged to do), and/or because he has not been given direct instructions on what he is supposed to DO. When men do not have an action plan they get nervous, especially if there is a crying woman in the room. If you give your boyfriend a manual and tell him what his role is in helping you he is likely to be more relaxed and follow instructions.
I generally suggest writing a letter which you then read aloud or have a trusted friend check for potential land mines that will cause the reader to be defensive. After you have given the letter and time for the reader to digest follow up with a conversation for clarification.
Sometimes past arguments and relationships represent a block to communication. Perhaps your parents cannot take information coming from their daughter seriously. In these cases if you are working with a therapist it is a great idea to get them involved for a joint session where they help explain what is going on for you. Sometimes that masters degree will make the same words that you already used sound more real to a parent or boyfriend.
Finally if you have read a book, seen a movie, or even heard a song which really captures the way you feel, try to expose the person to that media. Sometimes Hollywood does a much better job than we ever could in explaining the way we are feeling, and while most guys are not rushing out to rent "Girl Interrupted" if you ask your man to watch it with you, he probably will.
None of these people can know what it feels like inside you, even if they have dealt with depression themselves. They don't need to know and if they are lucky they will never have to. They do need to be educated, however, that even if there is no reason for them your feelings are real and they matter. If they want you to be as healthy as possible they will not question your feelings or make you feel bad for having them, they will just support you in the way that works best for you.
Monday, November 9, 2009
why keep living?
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Question: I have struggled with depression for awhile because I just don't see the point of life. I'm not suicidal, I have no plan to end my life, but I sure wouldn't mind if death came and found me. I don't really believe in God, and relationships just lead to pain, so what the hell is the point of all this?
Answer: There is no point, or if there is, and I told you what it was you wouldn't believe me anyway so lets move forward as if life has no point.
Since you are scrapping the God and afterlife thing that saves us a lot of time and debate. We start with the facts, you are alive now and someday you will be dead so while you are alive you might as well enjoy the show.
Certainly life is painful, so what, it is also at least equally pleasurable. I know right now you don't believe that. Depression is a disorder of perception. You may be up to your chin in problems but when you are depressed you feel like you problems are stacked up to the ceiling.
To live, not just survive until death, but to really live we must inject our lives with meaning. Most people adopt the purpose and meaning suggested by their family/society/culture/religion, almost as many adopt an almost opposite philosophy as a reaction to those same influences.
At the end of the day no matter where you get a sense of meaning, mission, purpose you gotta get one or you are just killing time. Perhaps you will choose to be a hedonist and lead a life of finding pleasure and avoiding pain. Fine, if you like that go nuts.
My real suggestion is to try to find the activities that bring Flow into your life. (for detailed info on this see Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi's book Flow: The psychology of the optimal experience)
Flow is that feeling you get when time just flies by in a good way. You get this feeling when you find your optimal level of challenge in a task that you find rewarding.
Some people find Flow fishing or golfing, I find it in having intriguing conversations, you might find it grooming dogs or fighting for the environment. You can easily say that in the truly big picture none of these things matter. I won't argue with you. At the end of the day any intelligent logical person can make the argument that nothing matters, that we are just specks of space dust which make no ultimate difference to the universe.
I take the opposite meaning from our insignificance to the universe. To me that means that every single thing I do matters. Whether I am painting a picture, saving a life, or playing a game of solitaire all of these things matter as much as a thousand exploding suns. They matter if I let myself care about them, they matter if I put my time and my enthusiasm into them.
You ask why you should keep living, in answer I say you should start living. You need to take a risk, care, let things matter to you. You will find brilliant heart melting pain in this world, and you will also find joy, the laughter of babies, and if you can find your Flow you will feel certain that you do have a purpose on this planet that matters, even if it only matters to you.
Question: I have struggled with depression for awhile because I just don't see the point of life. I'm not suicidal, I have no plan to end my life, but I sure wouldn't mind if death came and found me. I don't really believe in God, and relationships just lead to pain, so what the hell is the point of all this?
Answer: There is no point, or if there is, and I told you what it was you wouldn't believe me anyway so lets move forward as if life has no point.
Since you are scrapping the God and afterlife thing that saves us a lot of time and debate. We start with the facts, you are alive now and someday you will be dead so while you are alive you might as well enjoy the show.
Certainly life is painful, so what, it is also at least equally pleasurable. I know right now you don't believe that. Depression is a disorder of perception. You may be up to your chin in problems but when you are depressed you feel like you problems are stacked up to the ceiling.
To live, not just survive until death, but to really live we must inject our lives with meaning. Most people adopt the purpose and meaning suggested by their family/society/culture/religion, almost as many adopt an almost opposite philosophy as a reaction to those same influences.
At the end of the day no matter where you get a sense of meaning, mission, purpose you gotta get one or you are just killing time. Perhaps you will choose to be a hedonist and lead a life of finding pleasure and avoiding pain. Fine, if you like that go nuts.
My real suggestion is to try to find the activities that bring Flow into your life. (for detailed info on this see Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi's book Flow: The psychology of the optimal experience)
Flow is that feeling you get when time just flies by in a good way. You get this feeling when you find your optimal level of challenge in a task that you find rewarding.
Some people find Flow fishing or golfing, I find it in having intriguing conversations, you might find it grooming dogs or fighting for the environment. You can easily say that in the truly big picture none of these things matter. I won't argue with you. At the end of the day any intelligent logical person can make the argument that nothing matters, that we are just specks of space dust which make no ultimate difference to the universe.
I take the opposite meaning from our insignificance to the universe. To me that means that every single thing I do matters. Whether I am painting a picture, saving a life, or playing a game of solitaire all of these things matter as much as a thousand exploding suns. They matter if I let myself care about them, they matter if I put my time and my enthusiasm into them.
You ask why you should keep living, in answer I say you should start living. You need to take a risk, care, let things matter to you. You will find brilliant heart melting pain in this world, and you will also find joy, the laughter of babies, and if you can find your Flow you will feel certain that you do have a purpose on this planet that matters, even if it only matters to you.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Is America going crazy?
Question: Is it just me or does it seem like everyone is diagnosed with ADHD, Depression, Bi-Polar, or Autism? Do you think it is because professionals are better at recognizing the symptoms or have we turned into a society that needs an excuse for everything? Or is there something in the environment that is making us crazy?
This is such a good question that I think I will have to do a separate post for each disorder, and a general one to start on diagnosis.
Part 1: General increase in mental health disorder diagnosis in our society.
The short answer to your question is...yes. I think professionals are far better at recognizing symptoms and since the introduction of better diagnostic tools (like the DSM III, IV, and IV tr) more professionals are speaking the same language and using the same objective criteria to make a diagnosis.
A diagnosis is not a label that you stick on someone and say, “Ok we're done.” It is a suggestion for a course of treatment. The DSM (big book of disorders) is not a menu. Any person looking through it would find at least 10 disorders they thought they had by going through the check lists. That is not how it is supposed to work.
The way it is supposed to work is a licensed professional meets with a client/patient and they get the feeling, based on their experience and the symptoms they observe, that this person may have a particular disorder. Then they check the DSM to make sure there is nothing that they missed, so they don't try a form of treatment that might be more harmful than helpful.
Assessment and Diagnosis are never complete, they are a statement of the best course of treatment so far based on the information we have. If the symptoms go away there is a pretty good chance the diagnosis was correct.
Does our society just need an excuse for everything? I think our society needs a reason for everything, and wants a cure for everything. We are taught that if we feel discomfort something has gone wrong and we ought to diagnose and cure the problem. Diagnosis is not an excuse, it is a reason, and suggests a course of treatment, but there are many people who use a diagnosis as an excuse.
Also I think that while every disorder in the book has been around for centuries (just read Shakespeare or Greek mythology) our environment lends itself to mental illness in a way it never has before.
Why? Kids today have everything right? I mean it is so easy for them, they don't have to work for anything what do they have to be stressed about?
Every mental health disorder is made worse by (and some are caused by) stress. Stress comes from having to make choices and decisions. Freedom and choices are wonderful things that we value, but when you have the freedom to choose there is a possibility that you might choose wrong and that knowledge grinds people down.
Our society has changed more in the last 150 years than it had in the 10,000 years prior to that. I am glad to live in our world today, but with each passing year as we give our children more leisure, freedom, and choices we pile the stress on. It is hard to have a nervous break down when you are a peasant who doesn't have time to worry about anything more than whether or not you are going to have enough to eat.
Finally there is something biological occurring in our present environment which cannot be denied. The increase in peanut allergies in the last generation requires a physical explanation. As does the increase in Aspergers and ASDs (autism spectrum disorders), these disorders exist. We do not know why yet but it is certainly not a failure of parenting, or over protective mommies making up excuses for the children.
The end result is we have a lot of people who are struggling. The good news is we can help and we are getting better at it all the time. I believe we are in the infancy of our understanding and treatment of metal health disorders. In 50 years as our understanding of the brain matures they will look back at our techniques as we do the blood letting of George Washington's generation.
This is such a good question that I think I will have to do a separate post for each disorder, and a general one to start on diagnosis.
Part 1: General increase in mental health disorder diagnosis in our society.
The short answer to your question is...yes. I think professionals are far better at recognizing symptoms and since the introduction of better diagnostic tools (like the DSM III, IV, and IV tr) more professionals are speaking the same language and using the same objective criteria to make a diagnosis.
A diagnosis is not a label that you stick on someone and say, “Ok we're done.” It is a suggestion for a course of treatment. The DSM (big book of disorders) is not a menu. Any person looking through it would find at least 10 disorders they thought they had by going through the check lists. That is not how it is supposed to work.
The way it is supposed to work is a licensed professional meets with a client/patient and they get the feeling, based on their experience and the symptoms they observe, that this person may have a particular disorder. Then they check the DSM to make sure there is nothing that they missed, so they don't try a form of treatment that might be more harmful than helpful.
Assessment and Diagnosis are never complete, they are a statement of the best course of treatment so far based on the information we have. If the symptoms go away there is a pretty good chance the diagnosis was correct.
Does our society just need an excuse for everything? I think our society needs a reason for everything, and wants a cure for everything. We are taught that if we feel discomfort something has gone wrong and we ought to diagnose and cure the problem. Diagnosis is not an excuse, it is a reason, and suggests a course of treatment, but there are many people who use a diagnosis as an excuse.
Also I think that while every disorder in the book has been around for centuries (just read Shakespeare or Greek mythology) our environment lends itself to mental illness in a way it never has before.
Why? Kids today have everything right? I mean it is so easy for them, they don't have to work for anything what do they have to be stressed about?
Every mental health disorder is made worse by (and some are caused by) stress. Stress comes from having to make choices and decisions. Freedom and choices are wonderful things that we value, but when you have the freedom to choose there is a possibility that you might choose wrong and that knowledge grinds people down.
Our society has changed more in the last 150 years than it had in the 10,000 years prior to that. I am glad to live in our world today, but with each passing year as we give our children more leisure, freedom, and choices we pile the stress on. It is hard to have a nervous break down when you are a peasant who doesn't have time to worry about anything more than whether or not you are going to have enough to eat.
Finally there is something biological occurring in our present environment which cannot be denied. The increase in peanut allergies in the last generation requires a physical explanation. As does the increase in Aspergers and ASDs (autism spectrum disorders), these disorders exist. We do not know why yet but it is certainly not a failure of parenting, or over protective mommies making up excuses for the children.
The end result is we have a lot of people who are struggling. The good news is we can help and we are getting better at it all the time. I believe we are in the infancy of our understanding and treatment of metal health disorders. In 50 years as our understanding of the brain matures they will look back at our techniques as we do the blood letting of George Washington's generation.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Cold psychiatrist
Dear Maigler: After years of thinking about it I finally got up the courage to go and see a psychiatrist to see if I should go on medication for depression. The whole experience was so cold. I felt like he was not really listening to me and that he had made up his mind in the first 5 minutes he knew me. He gave me a prescription and told me to come back in two weeks. I don’t know if I will. How can a psychiatrist make a decision about something this important without really knowing me?
Disappointed WithDoctors
Dear Disappointed,
I’m sorry to hear you had a negative experience with your psychiatrist. Unfortunately many doctors have poor people skills. You would think that psychiatrists, who are supposed to be experts in people, would be more warm and outgoing. Some are, many are not, but that does not mean that their clinical judgment is poor.
Most psychiatrists have worked with literally thousands of patients. While each patient is different the psychiatrist has relatively few treatment options. Within seconds of meeting you a good psychiatrist has picked up hundreds of things about you and your treatment needs before you have even opened your mouth.
If you show up to the office and you are clean, groomed, and have decent posture there is a good chance that you are not psychotic. Body language and the intensity with which a person makes or avoids eye contact tells the psychiatrist a great deal.
When you made your appointment and filled out the forms in the office the doctor was informed that you thought you might be dealing with depression. Once the doctor has met you, heard how you are functioning in many basic ways, and even heard the tone and rate of your speech all he or she has to determine is if depression is an accurate diagnosis or if there is a better explanation for the way you are feeling, if medication might help, and which medication to try first.
For a person who has done this thousands of times they could probably make an accurate diagnosis in 10 minutes 90% of the time. Most of them will take 40 minutes to an hour so that they don’t miss anything. The really good ones take 90 minutes or more to explore the person in depth, but even they probably had a pretty good idea of what they were going prescribe in that 10 minute window.
Always remember, however, that you don’t work for the doctor she /he works for you!
If you would like them to slow down and explain to you how they made their decision, most will do so happily, they might just forget from time to time how new this is for you.
I would highly recommend you go back to your doctor. Tell her/him that you are looking for more of a personal touch and if that is not her/his style ask them for a referral to a psychiatrist who will be a better fit. Please don’t stop here, you’ve already taken the hardest step.
Disappointed WithDoctors
Dear Disappointed,
I’m sorry to hear you had a negative experience with your psychiatrist. Unfortunately many doctors have poor people skills. You would think that psychiatrists, who are supposed to be experts in people, would be more warm and outgoing. Some are, many are not, but that does not mean that their clinical judgment is poor.
Most psychiatrists have worked with literally thousands of patients. While each patient is different the psychiatrist has relatively few treatment options. Within seconds of meeting you a good psychiatrist has picked up hundreds of things about you and your treatment needs before you have even opened your mouth.
If you show up to the office and you are clean, groomed, and have decent posture there is a good chance that you are not psychotic. Body language and the intensity with which a person makes or avoids eye contact tells the psychiatrist a great deal.
When you made your appointment and filled out the forms in the office the doctor was informed that you thought you might be dealing with depression. Once the doctor has met you, heard how you are functioning in many basic ways, and even heard the tone and rate of your speech all he or she has to determine is if depression is an accurate diagnosis or if there is a better explanation for the way you are feeling, if medication might help, and which medication to try first.
For a person who has done this thousands of times they could probably make an accurate diagnosis in 10 minutes 90% of the time. Most of them will take 40 minutes to an hour so that they don’t miss anything. The really good ones take 90 minutes or more to explore the person in depth, but even they probably had a pretty good idea of what they were going prescribe in that 10 minute window.
Always remember, however, that you don’t work for the doctor she /he works for you!
If you would like them to slow down and explain to you how they made their decision, most will do so happily, they might just forget from time to time how new this is for you.
I would highly recommend you go back to your doctor. Tell her/him that you are looking for more of a personal touch and if that is not her/his style ask them for a referral to a psychiatrist who will be a better fit. Please don’t stop here, you’ve already taken the hardest step.
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