Sitting in the office blogging at lunch time - I feel so grown up... and addicted to the internet.

Today was my first day sitting in on some psychiatric assessments with my research supervisor. The thing I've found most interesting so far is the motivation to seek therapy. For some patients it's when they feel that their disease has escalated and is becoming out of control and maybe someone new has noticed that things aren't quite right, but for other patients they seem to have weathered the storm and come in after the worst of the crisis is over. For some I think that when they're in the crisis they are so low in self esteem that they feel they're not worthy of help and when they start to see the light at the end of the tunnel they get up the self worth necessary to seek treatment. Maybe there's a fear that if they start slipping into it again they won't get the help they need, so they go now when they feel relatively well as a preventative measure. As I've mentioned in recent posts, I think therapy in a family medicine setting can be really rewarding so the things I'm learning here I think I will carry with me into my own future practice. It's nice to see outpatients too because they're more likely to be similar to those patients I would see. Although, last week with the family doc we did Form 1 someone, so I guess the more extreme cases do crop up. There are also other parallels between family medicine and psychiatry such as continuity of care. Overall, now that I'm doing some clinical stuff, the research will be more enjoyable. I hate sitting in a cold office alone all day on the computer.