Psychiatry Pseudoscience?

[Karl12]

Thanks for the replies - this a very short vid but it does cover the 1973 Stanford University experiment on unwitting psychiatrists and the subjective pseudoscience of the DSM.




Psychiatry and Big Pharma Exposed – A Corruption Beyond Measure

:beer:

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

Couldn't agree more.  DSM is total BS. You can make adolescence a disorder to medicate. 

"Irritable mood, argumentative and defiant behavior, aggression, and vindictiveness."  

And it has to last for at least 6 months. 

Isnt that every hormonal teenager? All have 4/5 present. Like puberty is a disease to sell scripts with.

But that's actually "Oppositional Defiant Disorder." A newer one deemed the most disruptive to society.  Kids that angrily, aggressively, or vindictively rebel are to be medicated into submission for the greater good.  

Let's see RFK Jr. CALL THAT OUT!?  It's probably too capitalist for him to touch. 

It's a legal drug dealing cartel. 

I really liked Adderall in college, but I didn't like the risk of buying it at some ridiculous street markup.

And all you need to do is see a psychiatrist and mess up their survey thing.  Like if you don't follow or thoroughly read the weird intentionally misleading directions, you are ADD.  And now you get a prescription of generics all for yourself without legal risk. 

I didn't think I was ADD, just never really saw the need to read directions carefully. You see a survey with answers you circle the damn answers. Who checks a box?

[l0st]

Isnt that every hormonal teenager? All have 4/5 present. Like puberty is a disease to sell scripts with.

But that's actually "Oppositional Defiant Disorder." A newer one deemed the most disruptive to society.  Kids that angrily, aggressively, or vindictively rebel are to be medicated into submission for the greater good. 

Yep! You are exactly right about this.

[Ray1990]

Nice thread.

It might be worth comparing the mark-up of psychotropics in the US to elsewhere. Seems in my nation (UK) there's very little to be made beyond prescriptions since they do shop about to keep their prices low. Currently I'm on a drug from Czech Slovakia which isn't in English. It's why I looked into this and realised it's at least 8x the price in the USA.

The whole "there's no definitive test" for mental illness is true but it's also true for a lot of issues such as IBD or arthritis which is often why an expert should be diagnosing them. Depression and anxiety is in a different league from what's usually classed as a disorder and is why a GP can diagnose the former but not the latter.

Chemical intervention should always be a last resort imho but that really depends on when an 'intervention' was done. If someone with PTSD is being violent then they need meds, same if someone wants to jump off a bridge due to the hallucinations they're having. Depression? Probably not although there's physical telling tale signs of depression and anxiety too. The meds do work for them and they'll often work for the comorbities too such as nerve issues, headaches/migraines with drugs such as Amitriptyline.

I'm in 2 minds about this, I'm one of those so called 'nutters' in a long-term sense and I have plenty of experience with the drugs and the alternatives, including the fringe ones. There's definitely an element of pseudoscience but the diagnostic pathways do provide results and so does the conclusions. We're dealing with the mind after all which still remains one of the biggest mysteries man has encountered.

They're not wrong, just not completely right either. Just my opinion.

[l0st]

Nice thread.

It might be worth comparing the mark-up of psychotropics in the US to elsewhere. Seems in my nation (UK) there's very little to be made beyond prescriptions since they do shop about to keep their prices low. Currently I'm on a drug from Czech Slovakia which isn't in English. It's why I looked into this and realised it's at least 8x the price in the USA.

The whole "there's no definitive test" for mental illness is true but it's also true for a lot of issues such as IBD or arthritis which is often why an expert should be diagnosing them. Depression and anxiety is in a different league from what's usually classed as a disorder and is why a GP can diagnose the former but not the latter.

Chemical intervention should always be a last resort imho but that really depends on when an 'intervention' was done. If someone with PTSD is being violent then they need meds, same if someone wants to jump off a bridge due to the hallucinations they're having. Depression? Probably not although there's physical telling tale signs of depression and anxiety too. The meds do work for them and they'll often work for the comorbities too such as nerve issues, headaches/migraines with drugs such as Amitriptyline.

I'm in 2 minds about this, I'm one of those so called 'nutters' in a long-term sense and I have plenty of experience with the drugs and the alternatives, including the fringe ones. There's definitely an element of pseudoscience but the diagnostic pathways do provide results and so does the conclusions. We're dealing with the mind after all which still remains one of the biggest mysteries man has encountered.

They're not wrong, just not completely right either. Just my opinion.

You think they need meds or do they need psych help? I'm not convinced, personally, that meds are necessary in most if not all cases. I'm curious what your thoughts on this are? Are we medicating young boys into oblivion? I personally think we are. We are criminalizing normal behavior IMHO.

[Ray1990]

You think they need meds or do they need psych help? I'm not convinced, personally, that meds are necessary in most if not all cases. I'm curious what your thoughts on this are? Are we medicating young boys into oblivion? I personally think we are. We are criminalizing normal behavior IMHO.

Kids? Definitely. Decent parenting would help with the majority, if they can pick up a physical hobby all the better.

Drug use at 13, joining gangs, killing ex's, killing themselves etc etc isn't exactly normal kid behaviour though. We can't change a person's past and untimely intervention can sometimes have really bad results. Difficult choices to be made in those scenarios.

It should never get to drugs for the vast majority, for some it's practically a death sentence and the link with suicide on these class of drugs is well known especially with the youth... So I have mixed feelings on it, some of it is definitely a piss take. Plus quite a few cases of teenage homicide involve a recent prescription of these kind of drugs, yeah...

Personally? Mirtazapine worked but only because it helped with sleeping. Chemically speaking I'm in a similar boat as an earlier poster in that the likes of Xanax are the only proven meds to work. I have to say it doesn't seem all that easy to get those kind of drugs here and are usually only used as a last resort in times of turmoil and in very short-coursed doses.

SSRIs and their little family of money makers are bloody dreadful imho. Psych help is usually done in tandem with drugs though isn't it? Seems to me it's more about where they go after too. It's pointless teaching someone different ways to think/react when there's a near guarantee they'll resort back.

I'd advocate for specialised communes for the youth personally, they really seem to work.

[Karl12]

After 52 years of documented school shootings in America 100% of all teenagers were on antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, Xanax etc.

All these drugs side effects state they could lead to 'violent suicidal or homicidal actions'.

Why prescribe them to anyone then?

Especially teenagers.

[Ray1990]

After 52 years of documented school shootings in America 100% of all teenagers were on antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, Xanax etc.

All these drugs side effects state they could lead to 'violent suicidal or homicidal actions'.

Why prescribe them to anyone then?

Especially teenagers.

Because they can work.

I know in the UK cost is the main issue. It can take years for a proper diagnosis and to access a psychologist and a psychiatrist at the same time.

Xanax is a benzodiazepine, it shouldn't be handed out willy nilly and it should always be in short targeted doses with professionals having a strong guiding hand in diagnosis and treatment. You shouldn't be getting them as an antidepressant. Same can be said for antipsychotics and many other drugs. SSRIs can be given by a GP although I'd rather they weren't... Feeling a bit depressed is rather generic though.

The real problem? Targeted treatment is expensive or has huge waiting times. The kicker is generic drugs can be deadly on the misdiagnosed. An SSRI is never going to help someone with psychosis, quite the opposite actually.

[UltraBudgie]

Does anyone have any thoughts on how psychiatry can not be considered a pseudosciemce considering it's absolute lack of objective evidence?

well its true that psychiatry has a real replication problem where a large number of results cannot be reproduced and are not tested objectively. and also the way psychiatry measures results (little test scores like "happiness index" and such) is questionable and often not objective outside the cultural matrix in which it exists, and there's no clear way to separate it. that's unscientific, i guess.

but not all measures are that way, for example health outcomes, suicide rates, basic mental aptitude skills. many methodologies are rigorously scientific. and the very fact that it can be said there's a "replication crisis", doesn't that indicate that there's some core of science there, that the whole thing isn't pseudo-science, even if the field isn't living up to the standards of say, math or physics?

seems like psychiatry can get results, especially as a tool of socio-behavioural manipulation. look at advertising, for example, or the role the apa played at guantanamo. maybe the fact is, psychiatry isn't the science it says it is.

[Maxmars]

I know this observation usually goes to the wayside... but why is it whenever we lament over the fact that healthcare is so unaffordable that we never explore the substantial difference between the reality of "cost" and it's virtualized cousin, price.

I will not hesitate to admit that it seems impossible to place a monetary value on the restoration and preservation of health.

But if no one can afford it anymore... is there maybe room to consider that the price "decision" (not cost) is what's wrong?