Posted by CareBear04 on February 4, 2005, at 13:53:34
In reply to Re: to gardengirl-- the perspective of a T » CareBear04, posted by gardenergirl on February 4, 2005, at 8:10:58
thank you garden girl so so much for your reply! i know it was a lot of questions, but you answered them so articulately.
yes, my previous pdocs have usually not initiated contact with the exception of the woman dr who called occasionally when i transitioned back to school out of concern or curiosity. the first pdoc who saw me deteriorate from regular depressed to psychotically suicidal in the hospital seemed happy when i established email contact and always replied promptly. he seemed to like the communication. you raised a really interesting point, though, about liability, especially from the point of view of a non-licensed non-supervised student. i guess i've never had a T in training, so it hasn't occurred to me. but as far as getting advice from old pdocs, i feel lucky to get their thoughts. i don't usually follow a person's advice, anyway, unless it agrees with me personally, so it's just like surveying the people around me whom i trust. i guess i see it more like contacting mentors or friends. no matter what the consequences of their advice, i would never think to hold them responsible for giving me advice. i might think, "oooh, that was a bad suggestion," but as for accountability, i think that lies with the actual people who are face-to-face in charge of keeping you healthy and safe. it doesn't sound like you're too conservative at all. what you said makes a lot of sense. also, rethinking the generational differences in limits, i think it's probably less generational and more alligned with experience. my Ts were middle-aged with 10-20 years until their belts, and i'm sure by that time, they ease up on following rules to the letter and go more from their experience. if someone needs more followup and doesn't appear too reliant on the T, maybe an older T would feel ok with keeping some contact. the resident pdocs i've seen in the hospital, especially the R1s, are so uptight and can't make a move without an attending two feet away.
as for the hospitals, it differs. i've been in three psych units. maybe it differs also with the time of year. my first time was in my university's hospital. by the time i got there, there were at least a half dozen kids from my school and a handful of other young people. this was around first midterms. one 15 year old girl who had been there since december told me that, at that time, she was the only one under 60. my next time in a private hospital in uptown NYC, i was definitely in a geriatric setting, though it was a regular adult ward. this was mid september, right after school started. both places had plenty of old people getting ECT. the most recent stay, i started out with all others two or three times older than i am. with time, younger people came and went. this, too, was around midterms time. the latter two hospitals had psychology interns running groups and stuff. in the first hospital, there were no group therapies except for things like "creative writing," or the fun art and recreation ones ran by the occupational therapist. i hear many hospitals are cutting out psychologists and psychology interns? if that's true, i think it's a shame. interestingly, though i've been pelleted with handfuls of diagnoses in the hospital, i've never had any psychological testing since the first grade when they put me up a few grades.
anyway, thanks again for your response. you've been a huge help and a great source of insight! with much respect, cb
poster:CareBear04
thread:452491
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050129/msgs/453220.html