You're spot on about the need for more of a team approach, AKA Smith. One of the greatest frustrations of my career (and, heck, my personal life too) has been dealing with the need to coordinate information between psychiatrists, family doctors, therapists, emergency rooms, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmacies, social workers, public guardians, and on and on and on. And the more disabled a person gets, the more the system gets involved, the more cooks there are in the kitchen, the more potential for abuse there is when the cooks aren't paying attention and overseeing each other. Health care is only as helpful as the caregivers who provide it; as the number of interested parties grows, the chance of happening upon a dud or worse expands exponentially. And the more the system is taxed, the more burned out caregivers get, the more likely even the best of us are to cross ethical lines. It is truly exasperating. This is where family members, like the parents in this article, can play such a crucial role, because they are often the only people who have all of the history and are aware of all of the pertinent information. And the worst sufferings by far are reserved for those psychiatric patients whose family members do not take an active approach, or are flatly counterproductive (like the young woman I know who periodically winds up unemployed and homeless, every time her mother takes away her antipychotic medications because she'd rather her daughter be psychotic than fat).

What really causes me to despair is knowing that the self-advocacy and self-education that is so vitally necessary in our underfunded, structurally flawed system means that those who are poor, undereducated, or lacking in social supports are likely to get far inferior treatment. It is truly a travesty. I have a feeling that we both have war stories to share. The only thing that keeps me from throwing my hands up and walking away from the issue entirely is the hope I gain from doing serious advocacy for better funding, better organization, and more empowerment for mental health clients.

I agree, AKA Smith. The fact that we need the internet to save our loved ones' lives is terribly sad. And the type of prejudice you experienced from your co-workers makes me see red. I saw a similar type of prejudice when working in a mental health program that hired former clients as counselors. These individuals were amazing human beings who had been through absolute hell and had insight into their clients' needs that none of the rest of us could possibly offer. Some of their co-workers had a hard time not treating them like children. It's no excuse, but I think some of us in the helping professions develop a bit of an us-and-them mentality about our clients as a psychological defense against all the sad things we see on a daily basis. But like I said, that's no excuse. I am personally thankful, to a degree, for my own more minor experience with mental illness (clinical depression) and that of my partner (bi-polar disorder, which, yes, has become a bit of a fad diagnosis lately) because it is much harder to think of my clients as entirely "other." But I keep it to myself at work, for fear of becoming someone's "them."

And Scavok, amen and amen to you.

To the fella who mentioned the effectiveness of CBT in patients with schizophrenia, if you happen to know the citation for that I'd ever so greatly appreciate it, as I have fought hard for the rather-unpopular notion that patients with serious mental illness can still benefit from therapy. A study like that would give me some real ammunition.