Behavioural medicine

I assume this means that the patient is always to blame if the " brilliant treatment " plan doesn't work.

The quote is from Dr Cameron Sepah,a psychologist in California.
I'm not sure of the context!

 

In psychology, the patient is the agent of change could be interpreted in a different way too. One that has to do with protesting abysmal quality.

 

If doctors want us to be passive they really should put more energy and effort into their “active” role!
No wonder they get so upset when we don’t play along or dare ask questions.

 

True ONLY if the problem a psychological one in the first place. If they stuck to psychological problems, we'd all be a lot better off. If it can't be fixed by psychological interventions ... then it can't.

 

Bit funny that the solution to "medicine is too top-down and patronizing and this is causing problems" is to invent psychologically-based alternative medicine, rather than changing medicine away from the condescending dictatorial method that is failing millions.

There is absolutely nothing forcing medicine to be this way. It's an artifact of history and a deliberate choice, it can be changed at any time. That's what the whole "patient engagement" is about, but medical institutions hate it so much they would rather implement impossible solutions instead. Bringing in magical thinking to fill the gaps isn't the solution to the problem, it's just the answer to the wrong question.

In a sense there is probably some accidental honesty here, that medicine is so rigid and dogmatic in being unquestionable and assumed to be infallible that few expect it to even attempt to change and just filling the gaps with junk is the best anyone can do. But that's also the problem.

 

I'm not sure many doctors would agree with this. For many diseases there are practical steps that the patient needs to take to get the best results, particularly with chronic illness such as Type 1 diabetes. Managing it is about far more than injecting insulin.

 

If ‘the patient is to be the agent of change’, the patient has to be empowered to act. A medical model of psychological intervention where the doctor imposes their understanding without any reference to the patient’s reality is inherently disempowering.

 

I don’t know whether the slide is so boring/patronising/lacking in insight, but my eye is drawn to what’s written beneath the screen. I really want to know what else is written behind the screen...or at least see her do a dab!

 

Seems pretty safe to say that what they mean by active patients is to follow instructions dutifully. It's still very much a unidirectional relationship in which one speaks and the other nods, the only change here is that active patient keeps on nodding after they left.

Sometimes this is actually helpful, some people really are their worst enemies, but the fundamental flaw is a belief that mistakes like us don't happen, which they can't actually tell apart despite believing so. You really get to see it in action when some physician can't tell the difference between depression and chronic disease yet insist they know better and your entire life experience is less valid than their limited perception and knowledge gap.

 

I looked up Dr Cameron Sepah on google. Chose images... OMG he looks a bit like a deer caught in the headlights. Went back to the "All" setting and he's at UCSF as an associate professor of psychiatry.