I saw a great play this week, Blue/Orange. A friend, knowing my field of interest, recommended it to me. Three characters, a young white psychiatrist, old white psychiatrist and a young, black inpatient client. Three characters and none of them are right. People may not think of psychiatry, psychology, social work (helping fields) as competitive as the business world but everyone wants to be recognized no matter what field they are in. Some people go to further lengths than others to be recognized. Sometimes patients suffer because of this.
The older psychiatrist teases the young psychiatrist for being in love with the ICD-10 (similar to the DSM-IV). I think I’ve wrote before about my brief love affair with the DSM-IV. My capstone paper in grad school was written in the style of describing a relationship and break up with the DSM-IV.
The patient’s role had a lot of truth behind it. Young, black, no support system, chronic mental illness. Not going to improve in long term inpatient facility, not going to take his meds in the real world. And a doctor wants to pin the schizophrenic label on him.
It was a good play to get me thinking, get me missing actual clinical practice. Get me studying?
come seeee meeee