thecrazygeek-rant:
contra-indication:
thecrazygeek-rant:
fempoli:
thisisthinprivilege:
i should never underestimate a medical doctor’s ability to make me feel worse about myself and my life in a significant way.
on tuesday, i had a psychiatric appointment that was a follow up to re-evaluate my anxiety disorders (OCD, social phobia, GAD, panic disorder) and depression (atypical recurrent MDD), neither of which are well-maintained.
the psychiatrist spent twenty minutes (the majority of the appointment) interrogating me about my weight and health status despite me trying to change the subject and reminding him that i do have a GP who i am currently seeing who takes care of issues such as whether or not my fucking knees and hips hurt and blood test results. he also asks me to go through what i ate in the past three days and became incredulous once my panic started increasing and I told him I couldn’t remember what I ate on saturday and sunday (which i honestly couldn’t). additionally, he asks about my exercise habits and doesn’t seem to be satisfied with what i say but doesn’t fight me on it.
he tells me that being fat makes you depressed and anxious. asks me if I want to see a nutritionist. inquires about my past eating disorders and treatment. seems miffed by me stating that i’ve seen the nutritionist at this institution and did not think that it would be presently helpful to see her again.
at this point, i’ve sunk into my seat, i’m feeling humiliated and defeated. i’m giving one word answers and don’t even know how to respond at all to some of these things, and i’ve started dissociating. he briefly addresses my mental health.
on the way out, as an afterthought, he asks me if i’m feeling suicidal. i just look at him. if i hadn’t felt suicidal before this appointment, i certainly now felt suicidal walking out.
overall, an extremely disheartening experience at best. i walked out of there feeling ashamed of myself and my body. i’ve also been questioning whether i should probably stop tapering off my remaining meds because apparently i don’t need them.
i’ve been left with that familiar fear that the the problem is and has always been solely my attitude, laziness, and lack of self-control, and that’s the reason i have suffered from extreme anxiety and depression and whatever else my entire life.
that medical professionals truly believe that if i only worked harder and dedicated my time to losing weight that i might be cured of my anxiety and depression. that i don’t have any real biological/neurological issues and its purely mind over matter and the solution is to lose weight as fast as possible, any way possible.
it has occurred to me on many occasions that the way people, and especially medical professionals, treat me has deteriorated as my weight increased. the only way i can justify this is that in their mind, being overweight/obese is a moral failing, a result of bad habits, lack of willpower, and that encouraging weight loss/glorifying thinness takes precedence over respectful and adequate treatment.
i KNOW my depression and anxiety are not a result of my BMI. otherwise, my mental health would have improved as my weight had gone down in the past and vice versa. as my weight has fluctuated drastically throughout the years, this has not been true. i wish i didn’t feel like i have to starve myself to be treated with respect. i KNOW that diet and exercise plays a big role in maintaining a healthy lifestyle – and factors in both mentally and physically, but that’s not whats going on here. it sucks.
i’m feeling like garbage. at the moment, i’m ready to give up on it all.
this is what it’s like trying to navigate the medical system for mental health help while fat.
Sadly true. I still encounter doctors today who will refuse me my antidepressants and tell me that losing weight is a better cure…
I know anecdotal evidence is hardly helpful, but losing weight for me did majorly help with anxiety and depression.
It’s not just the confidence that can help though. When you’re bigger your hormones are released differently. Fluctuations in weight like you described can also make psychological problems worse as well.
I’m awful at helping people feel better and by no means am I trying to sound callous, but perhaps the doctor is on to something and is trying to help.
If they discussed it in a bad way, I would find a doctor who will treat you better and try to help you through what you are going through. No matter what you are going through you should be respected as a person.
I have had severe depression since I was 11. I had it when I was at my anorexic worst. I still have it today. Mental illnesses are not governed by your weight. I have plenty of confidence in myself - I still have depression and OCD and schizophrenia though. I can be a bloody genius at fixing software (which I am) but it’s not going to cure clinical depression.
Antidepressants work for me. I am seriously sick of having doctors tell me to go jogging (something I literally cannot do anyway due to back injuries) or go on a restrictive diet (not something you say to someone with a history of anorexia). Just give me my fucking meds.
If I get lucky and see my regular GP he will treat my issues. If I don’t I usually get some shit for brains who will prescribe weight loss and exercise for absolutely everything because all they see is an overweight person and thus everything must be to do with my weight.
@contra-indication
i’m not sure if you’ll see this since the tagging doesn’t seem to be working and you deleted your response, but, i’m going to say this anyway.
i am the OP. i have been diagnosed with a mental illness for over 10 years now and have experienced mental illness (depression and anxiety noted in childhood medical records) since i was 5 years old. i am turning 25 this year. so you could say i’ve been experiencing mental illness for 20 years. i have a strong family history of mental illness and my childhood environment, like for most people, was less than ideal.
this is all clearly noted in my fully up-to-date psychiatric record. i do not detect anything malicious in your tone, yet, your comment is incredibly unhelpful and missing the point(s) i was intending to make and that’s what i’m addressing here.
barring the fact that you made a comment that doesn’t really have any scientific basis (when you’re fat your hormones are released differently? what does that even mean?), this post was about the dehumanization and disrespectful treatment doled out by doctors and specifically psychiatrists who don’t adequately treat severe mental illnesses because instead of seeing an individual with complex issues in front of them, all they see is fat.
we’ve all been inundated with the idea that all problems that fat people experience are a result of their own fat killing their body and mind. do you believe that fat people cannot experience mental illness like thin people? that thin people are genuinely suffering from medical conditions and fat people just need to lose weight? to me this seems to be clearly condescending bullshit, and yet, this is how doctors often approach fat patients, and its backed up and enforced socially by well-meaning but biased people like you.
at least one study that i can recall has shown that the link between being overweight and depression is often caused by the way fat people are treated and the way they perceive themselves rather than there being an organic medical reason behind the common link. people are treated like shit which makes their depression worse which makes them eat more which makes them more depressed which makes other people treat them like shit and it’s a never-ending cycle.
other than that, assuming that the connection between being fat and depressed is caused by poor nutrition and lack of exercise, again, is false because fat people can have good nutrition and exercise, and thin people vice versa. how does it make sense that mental health issues suffered by fat people can be resolved or severely ameliorated by losing enough weight? unless you believe that all the mental illnesses i’ve been diagnosed with are not valid biological/genetic phenomenons that are at least somewhat hereditary and are exclusively a result of my poor lifestyle choices which have led me to being overweight, then, well you’re ableist and very misinformed.
if the connection between being fat and depression is about a lack of self-confidence then it would make sense that instead of encouraging people to lose weight (which hardly ever works and instead leads to more significant gains and fluctuations in overall weight), we should encourage them to respect and love themselves (which coincidentally actually often triggers a natural weight loss). even then, self-esteem issues don’t disappear and are often even exacerbated by weight loss and the trouble with dieting and maintaining a stable weight for most people who are fat or have been fat.
if you read my post you would understand that the way the doctor treated me was very poor. since i’m a patient with substantial medical history at this institution and also someone who is being monitored by a general practitioner and all my health records are up to date then it would make no sense to make 95% of the appointment about my weight. there were points in my life where my weight has been relatively stable for years (mild fluctuation but nothing severe) and i was still mentally ill. there are points where i’ve not been overweight and i’ve still been mentally ill. like i’ve said, my highest, stable weight has not resulted in the worst mental health flare-up of my life and my lowest, stable weight had not resulted in the absence of symptoms of mental illness. not even close. one thing that certainly contributes to weight gain is the medications i’m on, which are the only things that have really helped even marginally with my mental illnesses. go figure.
now, my fluctuating weight is certainly related to both my depression and anxiety issues as i have a diagnosis of EDNOS (OSFED), and these conditions all feed into each other. this is not news to me and that has been addressed time and time again, is something i even had mentioned during the appointment, and yet the doctor could not even respect me enough to accept that i was educated on the topic and doing my darnedest to manage weight fluctuations and trying to not fall into my toxic binge/fast cycle. for this reason, comorbid addictions/eating disorders with other mental illnesses are hard to treat because they exacerbate each other and it can be hard to tell where one starts and the other ends. reminding me and addressing this alone would not be wrong! despite all that, this was not the point or focus of the appointment and its not what was going on there!
if you don’t think that nearly every single psychiatric appointment of my life that my weight has been mentioned or addressed to the point of it very obviously and explicitly negatively affecting my mental health treatment and overall self-worth and definitely impeding my willingness to continue to seek psychiatric/psychological help then you would be severely misinformed, and that was the point of my submission and reason for the existence of TITP!!
when i was thinner, i would be congratulated for my hard and necessary work even if the weight loss was directly caused by depression/anxiety/ED. if i had gained weight, no matter what, this took precedence over my mental health treatment. the respect i receive from psychiatrists is directly influenced by how much i’ve weighed. the less i’ve weighed, the more concern and empathy, and adequate/appropriate treatment i’ve received from medical professionals. if you think this constant dehumanization and disrespect from doctors i’ve been subjected to off and on in my life is something any fat person can escape, you are misinformed. if you think that this approach is necessary, helpful, and solely coming from a place of well-meaning and a wealth of scientific basis, you are misinformed.
browse the stories and experiences submitted to TITP and you’ll see. if you think that mental illnesses like panic disorder, OCD, and severe, refractory major depressive disorder that has persisted over a span of 20 years can be cured by losing weight, then you’re again, very misinformed.
if you think that a thin relative of mine with nearly identical diagnoses going into a psychiatrist’s office and being received with care, empathy, validation, and scientifically-backed approaches to immediately address her illnesses is fine, but i, a fat woman in the same situation, am instead humiliated and prescribed weight loss by any means possible, seems ok then, yea, you’re misinformed.
someone who is in extreme psychological distress and has lost their job because they’re compelled to spend 14 hours a day performing self-harming rituals because its the only way they know how to fend off the persistent violent images and thoughts that cycle through their head is not going to feel better if they substitute a few meals a week with a damn slimfast shake and take up yoga.
so, if you still think that the doctor was coming from a place of genuine concern, valid scientific basis, and respect for me as a human being, then i have to tell you !! that you’re !! wrong !!