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Health See other Health Articles Title: Are We Helping or Hurting Our Patients? I’m currently doing a one month rotation in addiction psychiatry at a veterans hospital. Working with patients with alcoholism and drug addictions has inspired me in many ways, and I’m learning plenty every day. I have been able to actually help some of my patients, however, I can’t help but notice some ways in which the “system” may be actually perpetuating drug and alcohol addictions. Many of my patients receive fairly sizable checks from the government every month for their physical or mental “disabilities.” At first blush, this seems entirely appropriate and warranted. Our veterans have served our country, and deserve every benefit they’ve earned. They especially deserve to be compensated if they have a disability, and even more so if they acquired that disability as a result of serving in the military. However, these monthly disability checks have unintended side effects when the patient has a drug or alcohol addiction. In fact, I’ve seen it so many times, it’s fairly ingrained in my mind. The patient receives their check near the first of the month. They then proceed to spend all or most of it on alcohol and/or drugs. And many times, after they’ve smoked too much crack cocaine or injected too much heroin, they wind up in the hospital again. It’s a horribly vicious and saddening cycle. But it’s not just about the drugs. The concept of what actually qualifies as a disability is not as black and white as one might hope. The number of people receiving disability in the United States continues to climb. On the surface, I absolutely support folks receiving income if they are disabled. However, I’ve also seen first hand how this can actually contribute to the downward spiral of a patient. For example, many times, once someone goes on disability, they frequently find it difficult to come off, even if the disability improves. I once treated a patient who went on disability at a very young age due to his mental illness, which actually ended up being treatable with improvement in all of his symptoms. He was young, intelligent, and talented and had his entire life in front of him. However, since he was already receiving a sizable income from the government, he decided not to finish college. As he didn’t have a job, he ended up becoming increasingly bored and isolated. Eventually, he turned to drugs to pass the time. And now, sadly, he has a severe addiction to crack cocaine and has subsequently become homeless. And guess where he continues to get the money to buy his drugs? Did we really help him? I absolutely realize that this is a very complicated issue. And a lot of research has gone into studying this problem. Many solutions have also been implemented such as creating a payee for certain patients, particularly if they have drug addictions. But no perfect solution has yet been discovered. I don’t blame the patient in the least, and I don’t even completely blame the system, either. But the question remains, in our attempts to do the best for our patients, are we always helping, or are we sometimes hurting? Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Poor young doctor. She is right, I see so many people helped into helplessness or placed on highly addicting drugs by pain doctors "helping" them. People who "help" other people can be the most dangerous people on earth. I had a social worker once on the local council on aging who called me and wanted me to sign a 72 hour involuntary detention on a "crazy" lady with 15 cats in her house. I would not do it, said I had to know person and situation directly before even considering it. She tried to argue with me, it was for old lady's own "good". I told her she had too much power for someone right out of college and she might be misusing it. She got another MD to sign commitment papers. They hauled her(old lady) 15 cats off to shelter and put her in local mental health hospital. The psych released her next day, saying she was "crazy" but sane. She came home to an empty house and killed herself. Motto, do- gooders are dangerous people, and great evil is most commonly perpetrated in the name of good. First do no harm.
Cartoonist Al Capp depicted female social workers, fresh out of college, as the most dangerous people on earth.
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