Because of the overwhelming stress I endured at the hands of my medical school’s newly reformed second-year curriculum (see Why I left medicine), I was pegged with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, a lifetime illness that requires me to be medicated on very powerful medication. Medications such as dopamine receptor partial agonists that have been shown to induce impulse control disorders (i.e. gambling addiction, hypersexuality, problems shopping, etc…), that blunts your emotions, makes you apathetic, gives you brain fog, among other terrible things. Sentenced to life on these.
This questionable diagnosis has changed the trajectory of my entire young adulthood forever. It is largely why I dropped out of medical school, it has made me lose a lot of friends (perhaps for the better though), and it has made dating quite difficult as you can imagine. Yet, I question every day whether I in fact have an illness proper given the circumstances under which it was diagnosed, and the fact that my “illness” doesn’t seem to conform at all to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s criterion. I would know, I was a medical student after all. I may have something, but it’s certainly not bipolar disorder. I also have zero family history of mental illness. Yet, attempt after attempt to tell some of these American psychiatrists–it’s been fifteen years now–what I am actually experiencing, they simply do not listen and continue to forcefully recommend these powerful medications in high dosages that have forever changed me as a human being. I cannot help but think that others like me are having their lives destroyed because of the underlying influence of these private drug companies that are certainly pushing for the use of these medications, and heavily brainwashing some of these doctors.
Among all medical specialties, psychiatry is the most controversial by far. Disorders are largely diagnosed on a subjective checklist-based method, and the treatments have side effects that can be the same as the symptoms of the “illness” one is being treated for! You can see where this can become a problem. There is no test for psychiatric disorders, no concrete biological evidence, just a “I think you have this…” One chance encounter with an incompetent physician, and you are effectively branded for life. Currently, many experts believe that there is a crisis in US mental healthcare exacerbated by the corporatization of the healthcare system in which efficiency in the form of monthly 15-20 minute meetings to adjust your medications are deemed sufficient over the traditional approach, which is psychoanalysis. But who has the time for that now? To put it plainly, these healthcare organizations are medicalizing normal human suffering for, I image, profits. But this is the American way, ya?
The Ivory Tower 
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