THIS IS SPARTA! Oh, and don't touch the lava guys... Spartans hate lava.

Well, my assignment is due tomorrow, so I will be submitting this blog to my professor after work tonight.  However, remember that internship site I was hoping to land?  Well, I was offered the position and today was my first day!  It was AWESOME!  I feel so lucky to be at a location that is pushing for integrated care.  I actually got to sit in on assessments with a psychiatrist all afternoon!  Seeing the medical model in play is a little different than I anticipated.  I expected it to be dry, emotionless, and almost boring.  However, I am also lucky to be working under a psychiatrist with so much passion for his patients, which was made evident by his communication with me regarding their behavior, affect, etc.  I was like "Your the doc!  This isn't my model. Why are you asking me questions?" Anyway, it made me very aware of the presumptions I had entering those bolt doors the first time and wonder how much of this attitude contributes to the battle between mental health models.

Let's make this a little more personal.  Many of you who may know me might also know that I am considering attending medical school after I complete my MA in CP-Clinical Mental Health.  What are your thoughts on this concept?  I have this internal battle that I cannot seem to resolve because it is difficult to formulate my own beliefs based on the kinetic forces of society.  Yes, society bullies this idea through media, money, you name it!  Why is it that a medical-behavioral type model is treated like the cracks in a tile floor?  Lava!  No one wants to touch it.  I "feel" like this is the next step in psych-treatment and I so want to be a part of it, but I don't know where to start!  I don't want to start a debate, I'm more curious about where you stand on this idea.

Maybe you are wondering "Why do you even want to touch the lava?" Well, as an example, treatment was very segregated at my practicum site last academic year in that there was very little communication between the psychiatrist and therapist (myself).  Now, you might be thinking, "Well that's what integrated treatment is for.... duh!"  Yes yes, but what if both modes of treatment could be done by one person?  One person, one model.  That totally sounds like a chant Spartans would yell before war, haha.  "One person!  One model!"  How would society view this model?  Would it start out as a scientific abomination as we have seen in the past?

It looks like my questions outweigh the amount of discussion in this post, but hey, sometimes there's not much difference between questions answers, right?