Summary of Review:- Dr. Tinu Thamby did a wrong assessment of my daughter’s psychological condition leading her to acute depression and complete loss of self-esteem.
Detailed review:- I approached Kauvery Hospital Chennai for the treatment of depression of my daughter aged 23 years. There, I consulted Dr. Yamini Kannappan. After primary diagnosis, some anti-depression medicines were prescribed and my daughter was referred to Ms. Tinu Thamby for detailed psychological assessment.
After 4 to 5 log assessment sessions with my daughter, Ms. Tinu Thambi released a detailed assessment report assessing the illness as "mild schizophrenia" by using the medical terms like "psychosis", "Paranoia"
Shocked, reading the whole report, I found that normal teenage problems like followings were taken very seriously and assessed my daughter "mild schizophrenia" :-
(1) Anger, frustration due to non-favourite conditions.
(2) Normal jealous emotions.
(3) Not coming out from the school day memories where there was lot of friends and not accepting adulthood.
(5) Normal superstitious behaviour (predicting future happenings on the basis of some present usual / unusual events)
(6) Unacceptable beliefs and customs.
(7) Brain’s normal analytical function for "Gaze detection" i.e. feeling that someone is watching you. This issue has been well answered in Quora at https://quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-sense-someone-is-staring-at-you-or-watching-you-from-a-distance
(8) Relationship insecurities.
(9) Teenage skeptical behaviour.
(10) Unmotivated due to depression.
(11) Emotionless behaviour due to depression.
(12) Doubting that others talk ill about her, degrade her.
(13) not accepting the stage of her age , adulthood and thereby not taking responsibilities of herself, family
(14) still living in age of childhood and expecting friends to have abundant times to meet and enjoy
Reading this report, my daughter felt more depressed and believed her illness was uncured. Her condition further deteriorated. The medicine prescribed by Dr Yamini was not working well. The psychotherapy was also not working well. My daughter stuck with the assessment report and developed strong denial for every counselling.
Aggrieved, I changed the psychologist and psychotherapist. The new psychotherapist advised my daughter not to believe any such assessment report because the psychology of any person is impossible to assess perfectly and correctly as the patient’s behaviour, belief, thought process etc are short aged and changes frequently. Further teenage beliefs and derived behavioural patterns from their immature assessment of surroundings, comic books, cinema etc can’t be made base for such assessment.
The new psychotherapist is now carrying counselling with normal antidepressant. The new counsellor specifically instructed my daughter followings not to be dependent fully on medicine but rather
(1) Change your behaviour (as the present behavioral patterns do not produce favourable situations)
(2) Always wear a smile on your face and keep humming your favourite songs - this will help bust your stress.
(2) Change your belief system.
(3) Relationship perspective - be humble to all, be it a rude person or be it a loving person.
(4) Don’t prejudge other behaviour toward you in advance i.e. always expect favourable behaviour from others before you deal with them.
(5) Simulate various negative/unfavourable situations and simulate its solutions in advance.
(6) Believe that friends are not forever, friendship always depends on the circumstances you are living in. School and college friends get separated because of different lines of career, different places of work and busy in their livelihood. The final friends are those working with you, your relatives.
(7) Don’t feel useless, left out and devastated but plan your work, you have a lot of work to do. List down works and make a schedule and to do list. No household work is small or inferior.
(8) Practice speaking in front of others, let your thoughts flow without hesitations. Take part in group discussions. Start giving your opinions in forums.
(9) And at last don’t feel that you are inferior.
My Daughter is now coming out of depression. She was earlier introverted and not socialised. She felt alone as there were no close friends, school friends were separated due to different careers and busy in their careers. But now she has started socialising, ignoring the people/factors which don’t suit her, facing social situations, coping/accepting adverse situations and planning for the future etc. She plans her work, makes a schedule, to-do list and follows it, thereby engaging herself in work and don’t feel devastated. She helps in household works. She also has started job somewhere. She now does decision-making in various issues at home.