psych?

Other fields of medicine tend to be algorithmic, mechanical, leaving little freedom for creativity or variation in the way we treat our patients. Psychiatry allows for this creativity as every patient is different and there are certainly many ways to approach the problems encountered. Being a relatively new field we know, dare I say it, little about how the brain and behaviour work. The brain mind discontinuity is one of the biggest mysteries that has yet to be solved. And this is exciting. There are discoveries being made at a level far more fundamental to human medicine than anything other specialty fields have to offer. For example, finding chromosomes that may harbour a gene for autism, new drug treatments for kids predisposed to bipolar disorder, statins and cholesterol lowering drugs slowing progression of alzheimer's etc, the implication of specific regions of the brain in anorexia nervosa. The main reason why I am opting for psychiatry is that it is the only medical field, I believe, to be “speculative” in the way that the humanities are. It does not rely exclusively on a disease-biology model. I want to study something intrinsically enriching, something that will make me see Man and his environment in a different light. To study psychiatry is to gain understanding of humanity and its frailty.

Psychiatry is challenging, the people we often see are the “sickest of the sick” (some with both mental and ‘medical’ problems). Was it not the desire to help people that drew us to medicine in the first place? In my opinion people with mental illness need our help the most. We have the opportunity to help them achieve a level of functioning that will allow them to live fulfilling and independent lives. How is someone with type 1 diabetes going to survive if their mental state is in such a way that they cannot understand the importance of compliance? We can read about appendicitis or myocardial infarction and learn how to cure these by following specific steps in a mechanical fashion. But when you read about depression or psychosis and see it in our patients, something inherent in our own being is triggered. We begin to feel, and we are allowed to.

photo-oil on canvas-the scream-edvard munch