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The Perils Of Psychiatric Medicine Affects Esther's Life

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The perils of psychiatric medicine greatly affected Esther’s life. In chapter 10, when Teresa, their family doctor, refused to prescribe stronger sleeping pills for Esther anymore, because Esther was unable to sleep and read anymore. She (Teresa) referred Esther to a psychiatrist, Doctor Gordon.
In Chapter 11, Esther later on realized that she was not sleeping for seven nights. She also realized that she has not had taken a bath, washed her hair and changed her clothes for three weeks either. The reason for this is that she thinks doing all these things day after day is silly and tiring. She wants to do everything at once in one day, and a different set of things to do the next day.
Esther analyzed Doctor Gordon very carefully, and she actually …show more content…

The Danger of Indifference. Psychiatric medicine is not supposed to be interrogation and identification of the problem only. It should involve empathy. Empathy is done by recognizing and internalizing the issues of the other person. It is not just knowing Esther’s life, but it is being in her life. It is “Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” as they say it. It is feeling what they feel. And that is what everyone would want to have in times of crisis. The tapping of pencil represents the doctor’s impatience on the conversation. Impatience drags down the “therapeutic” approach at the bottom of the pit. The mannerisms during conversations are important when establishing rapport with the patient. The client should not feel like she is taking the doctor’s time away from him. How can a client cooperated effectively with the health care professional if she feels devalued by him? After the client is presenting her problems, the psychiatrist is supposed to approach those problems one-by-one. But instead, what happened was that her problems passed by like a race car going through a lap. Their conversation was next to purposeless. There were no problems attended to. It is like a medical routine for doctors, the classical “How are you feeling today? Good? Okay. Bye.”-approach. A repetitive cycle which is supposed to attain a better relationship with the client, but it only ends as if the purpose is to get over with

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