Are there any psychiatric conditions that can’t be helped with any treatment or medication?
Not every condition is curable, so it’s not easy to completely get rid of a number of the conditions that we treat. But like a lot of illnesses that physicians treat, what cannot be cured can be controlled so that they can be kept at a level where the individual can cope with life. So in those cases it may be necessary to continue to take medications indefinitely. What is the most challenging aspect of your profession? One of the most challenging or even frustrating aspects of psychiatry is that many of the psychiatric conditions and illnesses are not accepted by the individual as an illness, and they do not see the need for treatment. So there are many individuals in the community who have a psychiatric problem who do not get treatment. It might be a very real, troubling situation to family members or work associates, but to get the individual to see that their alcohol problem or their depression or their psychotic condition could benefit from treatment is often not easy to convey to
