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Question

I need to self study my psychology better so as to help myself because I live in a very poor country with health system in shambles. I tried services of 4 doctors and 4 therapists. I wasted a lot of money despite being with modest means. Last doctor which did a really good diagnosis told me that I am suffering from depression, schizoid personality disorder, interpersonal issues with parents. But therapist is not good and doesn't offer help. There is no hope for better treatment in my country and I can't leave it because I can't afford. Two doctors were dishonest and 1 labelled me for bipolar and 1 for schizophrenia which I don't have.

I am not adding other details (history of disease) because I am not sure question will be on topic or not?

Question : I have studied few self help books like: CBT in 7 weeks by Seth Gillian, Adult children of emotionally immature parents, The Gentlemen's Book of Ettiquette. But I need to understand my personality completely so as to verify where the problem is and then read some books to have better coping mechanisms (I want to live, I want to understand my issues, I want to improve myself). So, Can people on the website suggest some books so that through doing tests and reading the books so that I can understand the core of my personality and issues? I want to know the books that focus on core parts. I am a major in physics from a good institute and would be able to follow the books I think. I have no faith left in therapists in my country. I take medicines prescribed by psycaterist religiously but I think without knowing deficiency in my personality and correcting them, it would be hard for me to survive in the world. I have googled a lot of stuff but I think it would be good for me to read proper books.

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Answer 1

No, we can't help you with your personal psychiatric/medical concerns.

It's possible you may craft some questions that fit the site guidelines, but there are a few big barriers to helping people with personal problems:

1. We do not have a suitable mechanism to verify the credentials of people answering. Answers here are written by just "people on the internet", which is not a sufficiently reliable source for psychiatric care.

2. Medical and psychiatric care depends crucially on proper diagnoses and subsequent monitoring of treatment. We aren't going to be able to sort out differences of opinion from different experts and tell you which ones are correct; we might cause you harm if we provide advice that helps you based on one diagnosis that turns out to be incorrect.

3. Professionals in mental and physical health are bound to ethical codes that make it a problem to provide substandard care, such as by giving advice to people they have not been able to examine. The result is that if you do get seemingly helpful answers, the answers are likely to be either by people breaking their professional codes (do you still want to trust them?) or people who are not actually qualified and therefore understand neither these professional codes nor are they prepared to help you.

4. The self-help genre is... well, it's pretty much junk. Lots of people make lots of money in that space selling this solution or that solution. Some people might be helped, but the vast majority of the work presented in the self-help space has no scientific basis. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong or can't help anyone, but no one has studied it well enough to show it works for anything at all. Different people can provide different opinions and guesses about what resources might help, but they are just that: opinions and guesses. The standards of this site require that answers be supported, and answers of opinion and guess can't be supported.

These are not solvable problems for this website.