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Saturday February 14, 09
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09:46 AM - just for kicks....
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I think I'll write about my "favorite" instance of when a mental health care provider was WRONG.
(I mean this in the most sarcastic sense and not to gloat. I think I briefly met him when I was 13 years old when my uncle was getting married).
My aunt by marriage had a brother who visited county services with severe depression.
I'm not exactly sure what was the compelling factor for his going and whether he went on his own or someone took him there. He was in trouble with the IRS for unpaid taxes of $7k....which doesn't seem like a whole lot, but considering this guy had been barely scraping by in life for many years, I guess it either must have been a fortune or he thought he was looking at jail time. I don't know Uncle Sam's policies on incarceration for unpaid taxes, but my guess is that the government would have lost much more money throwing him in the pokey than they would have simply allowing him to pay it off.
The person at county services said, "oh, you aren't depressed! go home."
A couple of weeks later, the dude killed himself.
Although I'm a big proponent of universal services, I can see why people are frightened of them. Granted, we already get something akin to this with HMOs.
"Here, take a vitamin. It will cure you of cancer!"
Granted, there are times when medical intervention is wrong or pointless. My back and neck problems didn't improve until I started going to the gym and strengthening those muscles. Did anyone at the doctor's office suggest that? No. They wanted to put me on Celebrex. I don't mind working for the end result. What I need is guidance instead of accidentally stumbling across the answer.
I don't know. The older I get and the more people I run across, it seems to me that the ability to cut straight to the answer is a rare gift.
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