Something that I'm wondering about: if someone is in bad circumstances, like they're living a fairly isolated life due to deafness and tinnitus, and they've lost their husband but they're getting regular visits from family, healthcare professionals, social workers etc, and they seem to be coping pretty well, keeping it together, do you think it might be possible for over-eager social workers who are not doctors or psychiatrists by insisting that the patient *is* depressed, that they must be depressed, to tip them into depression? I believe this may have happened with my mother - she was widowed fairly recently, back in May of last year, and once that happened I think maybe they wanted her to move into a home when she was in fact coping pretty well. My father's death was not a sudden thing. He died of vascular dementia as a complication of type 2 diabetes. It took about a year after he was institutionalised - due to lockdown we couldn't visit him. So yes, she was in grief, which is natural, but they insisted, over and over, that she must be depressed, and eventually she broke down crying and said I guess so, I must be depressed. It was not long after this that real frailty set in, she had a fall, suffered a lisfranc injury to her foot, went into hospital, contracted COVID-19 and died.
I'm not aiming to sue anyone. I just want the social workers to, if appropriate, get some guidelines to stop them basically bullying people into depression, because that's what it looked like.
Skiamakhos t1_iu3lsv0 wrote
Reply to I’m Dr. Lewina Lee, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Clinical Research Psychologist. Ask me anything about the role of psychosocial stressors on health, the lifelong legacy of childhood adversity, how optimism boosts longevity, & healthy aging. by BUExperts
Dr Lee,
Something that I'm wondering about: if someone is in bad circumstances, like they're living a fairly isolated life due to deafness and tinnitus, and they've lost their husband but they're getting regular visits from family, healthcare professionals, social workers etc, and they seem to be coping pretty well, keeping it together, do you think it might be possible for over-eager social workers who are not doctors or psychiatrists by insisting that the patient *is* depressed, that they must be depressed, to tip them into depression? I believe this may have happened with my mother - she was widowed fairly recently, back in May of last year, and once that happened I think maybe they wanted her to move into a home when she was in fact coping pretty well. My father's death was not a sudden thing. He died of vascular dementia as a complication of type 2 diabetes. It took about a year after he was institutionalised - due to lockdown we couldn't visit him. So yes, she was in grief, which is natural, but they insisted, over and over, that she must be depressed, and eventually she broke down crying and said I guess so, I must be depressed. It was not long after this that real frailty set in, she had a fall, suffered a lisfranc injury to her foot, went into hospital, contracted COVID-19 and died.
I'm not aiming to sue anyone. I just want the social workers to, if appropriate, get some guidelines to stop them basically bullying people into depression, because that's what it looked like.