The troubled history of psychiatry

[alktipping]

there is precious little actual science done by the psychiatric profession people seem to forget it was created from pseudo intellectuals talking bs /philosophy .

 

[alex3619]

there is precious little actual science done by the psychiatric profession people seem to forget it was created from pseudo intellectuals talking bs /philosophy .

Charcot was initially what passed for a scientist in the nineteenth century. Then he found mesmerism, and went very whacky. He taught at least two founding fathers of psychiatry, one of which was Fraud, sorry, Freud. A Fraudian slip I guess. Yes, it all started as philosophy, but then so did science, it was at one time called natural philosophy. The problem is science created rules for enquiry that kind of work, most of the time, but psychiatry far too often has research that falls below acceptable scientific standards. Their argument seems to be that they get a free pass because psychiatry is a difficult area to research in.

 

[Unable]

. Their argument seems to be that they get a free pass because psychiatry is a difficult area to research in.

Which should of course mean that all their conclusions are probable rather than certain.

They also should be looking for multiple explanations for the outcomes their trials produce. Eg Benefits being linked to worse outcomes. We understand the least healthy will be awarded most benefits - they conclude that giving benefits hinders recovery! (Sorry no reference easily to hand.)

In my experience, many psych trials are simply promoted as conclusive evidence of a favoured hypothesis.

 

[alex3619]

In my experience, many psych trials are simply promoted as conclusive evidence of a favoured hypothesis.

In psychopsychiatry there seems to be a tendency to produce studies to support their hypothesis, rather than test their hypothesis. In most of science this was abandoned by about 1960 or so, and was disappearing decades earlier. Psychopsychiatry could also use objective outcome measures ... this is difficult, but not impossible.

 

[Sly Saint]

Article from 2013 in the Guardian

Psychiatrists: the drug pushers
Will Self

Tom Burns, professor of social psychiatry at Oxford University, makes a supremely telling remark: "I am convinced psychiatry is a major force for good or I would not have spent my whole adult life in it."

This is a form of the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc ("After this, therefore because of this"), and it seems strange that an academic of such standing should so blithely retail it because, of course, if we reverse the statement it makes just as much sense: "Having spent my whole adult life as a psychiatrist I must maintain the conviction that it is a major force for good."

After all, the alternative – for Burns and for thousands of other psychiatrists – is to accept that in fact their working lives have constituted something of a travesty: either locking up or drugging patients whose diseases are defined not by organic dysfunction but by socially unacceptable behaviours.

Psychiatrists, of course, tell the public that the vast majority of these drugs are prescribed by general practitioners – not by them.

But what has made it possible for someone recently bereaved or unemployed to have a prescription written by their doctor to alleviate their "depression", is, I would argue, very much to do with psychiatry's search for new worlds to conquer, an expedition that has been financed at every step by big pharma.

Put bluntly: unable to effect anything like a cure in the severe mental pathologies, at an entirely unconscious and weirdly collective level psychiatry turned its attention to less marked psychic distress as a means of continuing to secure what sociologists term "professional closure".

psychiatry has been bedevilled over the last two centuries by "treatments" and "cures" that have subsequently been revealed to be significantly harmful.

Sooner or later we will all have to wake up, smell the snake oil, and realise that while medical science may bring incalculable benefit to us, medical pseudo-science remains just as capable of advance.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/03/will-self-psychiatrist-drug-medication

 

[Sly Saint]

2019

Challenging Stigma: Should Psychiatrists Disclose Their Own Mental Illness? - Psychiatry Advisor

Burnout has become an increasing problem among physicians. A recent Medscape survey found high rates of burnout among medical practitioners, including 42% of psychiatrists and mental health professionals.
1Depression is also extremely common in physicians, who have a suicide rate higher than that of the general population, and even higher than that of other academics.
2 There is also a high suicide rate in psychologists, with some studies suggesting that close to 30% have felt suicidal and nearly 4% have made a suicide attempt.
3 One study of more than 1000 randomly sampled counseling psychologists found that 62% of respondents self-identified as depressed, and of those with depressive symptoms, 42% reported experiencing some form of suicidal ideation or behavior.4

“Many people choose to enter the mental health professions, at least in part, because they want to examine their own, or their family’s, psychological issues, vulnerabilities, or pain,” according to Stephen Hinshaw, PhD, professor of psychology, University of California, Berkeley, and professor of psychiatry and vice-chair for child and adolescent psychology, University of California, San Francisco.

https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/h...chiatrists-disclose-their-own-mental-illness/

 

[Arnie Pye]

Article from 2013 in the Guardian

Psychiatrists: the drug pushers
Will Self





https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/03/will-self-psychiatrist-drug-medication

There are researchers discovering that people can sometimes reduce the severity of their mental illnesses using good nutrition as a treatment - improve their diet and treat them with vitamins and minerals and people start to feel a whole lot better. Ketogenic diets have been helpful in many cases of epilepsy since the 1920s, so is it surprising that it might help other problems in the brain? I think vast numbers of people in the US and Europe are over-fed and under-nourished because they eat too much junk food.

Title : Nutritional Therapy in the Treatment of Mental Disorders

Link : https://www.socialworktoday.com/news/enews_0218_1.shtml