Psychiatry and people

We must admit that our societies, in the majority, have a state of distrust in the work of a psychiatrist. This is a matter, even if it shows ignorance or backwardness in the mechanism of scientific thinking, but at the same time it constitutes confusion among people, who are afraid to express their opinion and are accused of backwardness and ignorance.

The subject is sensitive in more than one angle. It could be because writing about it at this time is considered a step back at a time when knowledge grows and visions expand. Also, because the matter is not based on scientific facts and figures, which confirm the standard of community confidence in this work. However, this does not negate the power of observation on this point, which affects more than one party involved in the subject; Doctors and specialists who spent many years in their lives, between study, reading and travel, and patients who really need follow-up and psychological treatment, whether due to organic diseases, behavioral problems or psychological emotions that need to be followed up, as well as the society that embraces ideas or turns against them through its direct use, frank opinion and apparent performance towards psychiatry.

There is no doubt that the term “modern diseases” or “diseases of the age” have become frequent in the past twenty years, and in an organic link with any unusual behavioral and societal phenomena, not to mention, of course, the magnitude of events and their terrible divisive development in the various fields that revolve around us. For new diseases “that were at their time”, and they became familiar in the frequency of their names and their use in analysis, discussion and reading of the general situation. But this familiarity with the nomenclature was not accompanied by practical confessions by society, towards psychiatry, in which people recognize its importance and the need for it verbally only, either because they really think so, or because they like to show their identification with modern ideas and methods of lifestyle.

So, what prevents people from entering the doors of psychiatric clinics, at the beginning of the problem and before things escalate? It seems that fundamental reasons stand in the way between the patient and the clinic door, preventing him from entering the clinics specialized in organic diseases and those adjacent to them. There is no place for you to book yourself a role for the coming weeks!

Although the specialty of psychiatry requires a number of years of study, specialization, and research from the researcher, it may exceed the specializations of organic diseases, but unfortunately it has not yet gained the patients’ trust as it should or in a fair manner commensurate with the years of study and effort.

Let us acknowledge that our societies build their opinion in the form of impressions based on circulated ideas, inherited stories, and lazy accustomed to solving problems in general. Unfortunately, Arab drama, which is a very powerful influence in building attitudes towards things, played a totally unfair role in presenting this profession and its workers, And linking the mental image with strange shapes and sometimes insulting bodies. In addition, there are some failure stories of patients who fell into the clutches of unreliable doctors, and this is repeated with the stories of patients and doctors of other specialties, but the first impact is more resounding because it is based on skepticism and disbelief.

Personally, I cannot take the blame away from the doctors themselves, who have not helped society accept their existence as smooth and necessary for life as they ought to do. The fact that a large part of them think that they are more important and of a higher status than simply providing their life function, or dealing with the prices of examination, consultation and treatment in a reasonable manner! This is what the opponents of psychiatric clinics rely on as an excuse to avoid them, at a time when many of them pay many times those sums to charlatans and witches!

A strange equation and two unreal opponents, each of which refuses to bear its responsibility in this dispute. It is an unhealthy quarrel at all, and it needs sane educational, media and pedagogical means to reconcile what is between them; Real patients with diseases that need treatment, respected specialist doctors.