Out of the psych ward

Just got done with psychiatry. I had a great time. I was in a general adult ward where most patients were voluntary. The staff was great and the patients were very interesting. What was really cool was that in their short stay of 3 to 5 days, most patients actually got better... not something I thought would happen quickly. What was even cooler was that there were no residents, so I was actually a useful part of the team and my patients were my patients. I got to interview them first, I got to write their admission notes, I got to do their discharges. This is probably the closest I've felt to a doctor.

Just for fun, here's something amusing that happened during the rotation:

Attending (while talking to a crack addict that didn't want to stop): You need to stop smoking rock and get addicted to something else. Like this (shows a picture of his cat). You can start getting high off of this.
...
Me (later): Dr. X do you watch South Park?
Attending: Yes
Me: Do you remember the episode where they get high off of cat urine?
Attending: It's called cheesing.
...
Attending (later, to patient): You should probably ignore what I said earlier about getting high off your cat. It's called cheesing and it's bad.

Psychobabble

I just started psychiatry this week and so far, it's been pretty good. I feel pretty comfortable talking to the patients I've had so far (although, they really haven't been out there, so I've got plenty of more chances to feel uncomfortable). Although I'm glad that we don't see much of it in medicine these days, in the 3 short days that I've been on psych, I've been exposed to the psychoanalytic model (Freudian stuff) more than I'd like (including part of our formal lectures). As a scientist who believes in theories based on objective experiments, I find it incredibly hard to believe the ideas in the psychoanalytic model. I mean, it's hard to believe that there are actually trained physicians (though decreasing in numbers) that actually believe stories about things like the "oral phase," the "id versus the ego," or the un(sub or whatever)conscious. It all really sounds like the quack cult psychology books (like The Secret) that Oprah and other daytime talkshow hosts promote. I know that the mind is difficult to understand and we essentially know nothing about where psychiatric disorders come from, but do we really need to make up colorful stories about some sort of hidden internal struggle in the brain? Some ideas may be useful in developing a treatment strategy, but still using outdated ideas and teaching untestable stories seems a little backwards to me.