Underground DSM-IV: The Professions

New social workers want to intervene in everything at once: couples counseling, substance rehab, going on disability, finding a self-help group, etc. This is the human services equivalent of invading not only Afghanistan and Iraq, but North Korea, China, France, Mexico, and the Maldive Islands, all at once,

If you suggest this to social workers, they won’t understand the analogy, noting irrelevantly that they were against going into Iraq.

If a social worker has arranged a placement with only a small window of availability, the patient automatically becomes clinically ready to go, and you’d damn well better agree. Otherwise, the SW will bite your head off the next time you ask about discharging someone.

When Psych Nurses say, “He needs to be discharged,” they mean “I want him discharged.”

When psychiatrists are finished with med changes, they conclude the patient is at baseline, independent of any data.

When anything changes, the psychologist will find a way to interpret it as progress.

The difficulty with being a Psychiatric Aide is the social and emotional battering they receive from both patients and ungrateful staff. Stress reduction classes make this worse. Encouragement might work, but no one’s ever tried it.