lianna<p>Hot take about one thought process that makes me sceptical of psychiatry and psychotherapy as a whole:</p><p>Your average psychiatrist's or psychotherapist's university education has been over a decade ago, often several.</p><p>First of all, all that knowledge is now horribly outdated, especially concerning only recently properly researched traits like autism or ADHD, but that's not the whole problem.</p><p>My own university experience also taught me that most students (sometimes including myself) just study to pass the next exam without really understanding or keeping most of what they're reading. Flawed science on the level of a school project is often still given a passing grade, especially to Bachelor's students.</p><p>That's all still assuming that your average psychiatrist or psychotherapist really even <em>remembers</em> most of their formal education! Who really remembers what they learned in school 20 years ago?</p><p>Most of them are just coasting along with Google and their "life experience", aka personal biases and heuristics. Your average psychiatrist or therapist is not sitting there studying new papers and reading up on cutting-edge neurodivergency findings after-hours. They'll just make assumptions.</p><p>If you add to all this the fact that most doctors and therapists are middle-class or upper-class middle-of-the-road centrists, liberals and conservatives with a traditional picture-book cishet spouse, kids, house and family dog... what can they really tell me about my very much different life?</p><p>Their only experience with trans people for example will usually at best be the textbook idea of "person born in the wrong body". They at best only know archetypal binary transsexual women and transsexual men and how to treat them.</p><p>What could they possibly have to tell me about my detransition experience or liminal experiences with my gender fluidity? Their entire idea of a trans woman is "man who feels like a woman, wants to live and pass as a woman and therefore needs medicine and social support to be happy." While that is even the best outcome, it doesn't even encompass the whole topic in the slightest.</p><p>The only thing that most of them are good for is prescribing medicine and bog-standard problems like burnout or depression.</p><p>The only psychiatrist or therapist I would trust is one who is still actively participating in the scientific community.</p><p>The decoupling of medical practice from medical theory has devastating effects. As much as it is unfeasible with the shortages we already have, there should simply be no practising doctors who aren't also constantly learning and up-to-date on scientific findings.</p><p><a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/psychiatry" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>psychiatry</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/mentalhealth" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mentalHealth</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/mh" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MH</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/psychotherapy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>psychotherapy</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/therapy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>therapy</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/health" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>health</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/neurodivergency" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>neurodivergency</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/nd" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ND</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/university" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>university</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/science" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>science</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/medicine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>medicine</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/autism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>autism</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/adhd" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ADHD</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/trans" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>trans</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/queer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>queer</span></a> <a href="https://micro.webgarden.click/tags/academia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>academia</span></a></p>