I keep meeting people - medical people! - who think that everyone on antidepressants (about 1 in 10 people!) or any kind of psychoactive drug, automatically has The Scary Dangerous Crazy.
Back at Snooty U, and this STILL annoys me, the wretched psych service* insisted everyone come in every three weeks for a 'check-in.' Or else no more medication. It was such a condescending, infantilizing, idiotic policy.
My appointments pretty much went: Does it matter how I feel? because you won't actually see me until next JUNE; actually I'm fine but I want to get back to lab so I can graduate this decade; yes, the medication I have been taking for three years is still FINE; no, I've never in my life been suicidal, do you people even listen? Can I have my drugs now? Thank you.
Every three weeks.
What really got me was that they refused to trust the patient's judgment at all. We couldn't possibly be adults, who could call if we needed help, oh no. We couldn't judge if we were stable. (I suppose they didn't really trust the clinicians either; they weren't allowed to distinguish between people they needed to see every week, and people they needed to see twice a year.) We all had dangerous, dangerous cases of The Crazy.
So when my PCP gave me a month of the drug I have been taking for four years... you can understand how I found it annoying and condescending. Hey! How about you give me a 6-month prescription and I'll CALL YOU if I need something!
* The department name also made me think "...and with lemon-fresh scent!" every time I walked in the door. Which is funnier if you know what it was.
