After 16 years of clinical work in psychiatry, I have been dealing with psychiatric patients and their families, and I still have a lot of feelings! Today, I would like to share with you a feeling that I would like to share with you the most, that is: harboring hope, the sunshine will surely come in! When I first graduated and started to engage in psychiatric clinical work, my teacher told me that “the efficacy of schizophrenia treatment has three thirds, that is, one-third of the patients can be cured, one-third of the patients can be significantly improved but can not be completely controlled, and one-third of the patients are not good; depression also has a part of the patient is intractable or incurable!” In the current domestic medical environment and the national standard operating requirements, but also requires doctors to start on the patient’s possible prognosis to inform the patient and his family, otherwise, if the treatment of a period of time after the effect of bad patients to find you to pull the words, you are going to lose, because you do not fully informed of the possible adverse consequences! This requirement still makes me quite torn! If I feel that the treatment may be difficult and the results may not be good, if I do not inform, I may have violated the norms! However, if I do, it may undermine the patient’s confidence in the treatment, which is a serious blow to a patient who is susceptible to psychological suggestion of the efficacy of the treatment! What is the best thing for me to do? I am not sure? In the past two years, the treatment of a very large number of patients, I will not repeat here! I have also come across a number of patients who were more difficult to treat, and might even have been considered poorly treated, who turned out to be miraculously well! Here, I cite a few examples to share with you: Lao He, is a nearly 60-year-old male, sick for 30-40 years, the last 3-4 years the disease has been back and forth, repeated hospitalization, drug adjustment of many kinds, the effect is still very poor! The most recent hospitalization was for almost 6 months or more, and he too often thought of giving up and dying! During the hospitalization, the doctor in charge can not be said to be not attentive, in order to control his condition, the classroom has been discussed many times, but also invited Hangzhou’s famous experts for consultation to guide the treatment, the effect is still unsatisfactory, but he has been insisting on, the doctor has also given him support and encouragement, his wife also often come to see him, but also in the process of exchanging her husband’s condition and the doctor, the doctor’s efforts to thank the words! (There may have been a hint of skepticism or complaint in her heart, but, she did not show it!) After being discharged from the hospital, although his condition still fluctuates sometimes, he has always insisted on seeing me because he trusts me very much, I keep giving him encouragement, and also try to adjust his medication slowly. In the last one and a half years, he has not been hospitalized again, and his life at home is quite regular, he wakes up in the morning, makes breakfast, goes out for a walk, buys groceries, comes home to do his household chores, watches TV in his spare time, and plays poker on the Internet, and his spirit is better in the afternoon. He does housework, goes for a walk, watches TV after dinner, and then goes to bed! In his own words, it’s “not bad, I do all the housework!” Ms. Fang, a woman around 40 years old, has been sick for almost 2-3 years since the beginning of her illness. She was first treated as a physical problem in a general hospital, and then referred to our hospital by her patients, and was hospitalized for 3 times, her condition improved significantly, and she was able to go to work, but she still didn’t get good control, and she was treated with “electroconvulsive therapy”, which is said to be the most effective treatment by the psychiatry department, but she didn’t get it. The psychiatrist called the most effective “electroconvulsive therapy” was also done, but still could not control her condition well, and she often had the thought that “my disease can not be cured, I might as well die”! However, through the preliminary treatment, her condition has been controlled by 60-70%, and one of the biggest changes is that she has become more and more proactive in her treatment and trustful to the doctor! Through my joint efforts with her, I also tried to adjust her treatment plan step by step, and in the last 2-3 months, she has gotten better! I also invite my mom to my house and I cook for her! Sometimes I go out shopping too!” Lao Li, a 50-year-old employee, has been sick for almost 3-4 years now. He found me under the referral of my original patient, and when he found me, he always said that he could not sleep, had no strength, was afraid of meeting people, and often had thoughts of death, but the good thing was that he would write to calm himself down when he wanted to die, because he knew that his death would be a fatal blow to his family who loved him so much, and he could not do so! That’s why he also hopes that he will get well soon! He has also been treated by me for almost 1 year or so, however, while he was seeing me, he would go to see and take any medication he heard about where a doctor could see him better or what medication was more effective, and after the results were not as good as he had hoped for, he would come back to me, and when he came back again, I would re-adjust the medication for him again! For most of the last six months, I’ve been giving him the meds he’s been taking, and while not taking them exactly as I suggested, he’s basically following my regimen! Now, he’s basically better, too! In his own words, “I eat better now, I have strength, I am active in doing things, and I am not afraid when I eat with my coworkers, and sometimes I even drink with them!” These few patients, why did they get better? When I think about it, I think that the most important thing is “the persistence of the patients and their families, in the most pessimistic and difficult situation, but also with hope, continue to insist! Secondly, “the patient and his family’s trust in the doctor” also plays a big role, otherwise, the constant change of doctors, one may suddenly get better, there is a possibility that the treatment is more complicated, and really become a “refractory disease”! The third point is that “patients and their families understand and tolerate the limited ability of doctors and the complexity and difficulty of medical treatment”, as the epitaph of Dr. Trudeau of Saranac Lake in northeastern New York says: sometimes to cure; often to help; always to comfort; which also means that even if a doctor tries his best and wants to help you again, your illness may not be cured! may not be cured! Imagine how hard you would have to work to heal your patient if, in the course of treatment, he always complained that you hadn’t cured him, or that your treatment was ineffective. What if the doctor you met told you, when he was treating you, “Your illness may be difficult to treat and may not be very effective!” If your doctor doesn’t tell you “Is your disease difficult to treat?” Please understand that it’s probably because he “wants you to have hope for a miracle cure”! More importantly, you need to believe that the sun will come in when you have hope. Even after trying for a long time, you still don’t get better! Maybe one year from today, you will be miraculously cured! Even if you don’t get well, you can still live a more vibrant and meaningful life with you and your doctor working together!