4 ms·

I can honestly only appreciate this comment as a form of sarcasm ? If instead you were serious please consider the following, our understanding of psychiatry is

I can honestly only appreciate this comment as a form of sarcasm ? If instead you were serious please consider the following, our understanding of psychiatry is constantly evolving and psychiatrists are trained MDs, please don't confuse badly trained psychologists and the pharma industry trying to pump you full of drugs and nutritional supplements, with the science of psychiatry.

brookside 9y ago
I don't buy this view that pharma companies are the bad greedy ones, and psychiatrist are noble wise doctors participating in clean science. Pych doctors more than willing participants in the prescribing of stimulants and mild euphoriants. They get rich also doing so - 4/5 $200 appointments an hour is common, and if you look at the highest paid public employees in some states you'll see state-hired prison and other psychiatrists towards the top below university basketball coaches.
- cannonpr 9y ago
  Sadly enough a lot of doctors are complicit in it, after all a lot of doctors didn't get into it out of altruism, then again the same can be said to apply to a lot of developers, lawyers, and several other professions. My comment was in no way denying that our society is messed up. Just please don't equate a medical profession and body with nutritionists, that is just grossly disproportionate and just outright weird. If you like I can have a rant as to how little we understand cell uptake pathways and metabolic pathways another day.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
> please don't confuse badly trained psychologists and the pharma industry trying to pump you full of drugs and nutritional supplements, with the science of psychiatry. 69% of psychiatrists defining mental illnesses and their treatments in the DSM-5 reported having financial ties to big pharma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Criticism
2309kdujj 9y ago
This thread is sad. There's good psychiatrists and bad psychiatrists, good and bad psychologists, and the pharm industry has done a lot of good for society as well as harm. I'm not even sure where to start. Take, for example, psychologists: a lot of whatever progress has been made in mental health comes from psychology (quantitative measurements, moving away from monolithic, homogenous diagnostic categories, lots of research, even neurobiological research--hell, the head of federal mental health research recently was a psychologist with a neuroscience research focus); the pushback is often from entrenched MD political groups who play off the "trained doctor" stereotype. Pharm research, too, often complains about the overly simplistic disease models, but are required by the FDA to follow them in clinical protocols, further entrenching them (a different former head of NIMH has complained about this). Psychiatrists often are screwed by the health care industry, trying to care for the most ostracized segments of society (see the recent GOP health care bill, which basically gutted mental health care services completely). These sorts of discussions are always frustrating, because they're full of armchair, backseat scientists who are all too-happy to declare bad science, etc. without any solutions themselves. Behavioral health is a very challenging subject, and slapping on physics, chemistry, or mech engineering as some kind of perfect model just doesn't work. The irony is that it's more challenging than those fields in a lot of ways; if someone could just drop down from their physics throne and solve all the mental health problems, it would have been done already. It's been tried, believe me, and what usually happens is they grossly underestimate the complexity of what they're getting involved with.

brookside 9y ago

I don't buy this view that pharma companies are the bad greedy ones, and psychiatrist are noble wise doctors participating in clean science. Pych doctors more than willing participants in the prescribing of stimulants and mild euphoriants. They get rich also doing so - 4/5 $200 appointments an hour is common, and if you look at the highest paid public employees in some states you'll see state-hired prison and other psychiatrists towards the top below university basketball coaches.

cannonpr 9y ago
Sadly enough a lot of doctors are complicit in it, after all a lot of doctors didn't get into it out of altruism, then again the same can be said to apply to a lot of developers, lawyers, and several other professions. My comment was in no way denying that our society is messed up. Just please don't equate a medical profession and body with nutritionists, that is just grossly disproportionate and just outright weird. If you like I can have a rant as to how little we understand cell uptake pathways and metabolic pathways another day.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

> please don't confuse badly trained psychologists and the pharma industry trying to pump you full of drugs and nutritional supplements, with the science of psychiatry. 69% of psychiatrists defining mental illnesses and their treatments in the DSM-5 reported having financial ties to big pharma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Criticism

2309kdujj 9y ago

This thread is sad. There's good psychiatrists and bad psychiatrists, good and bad psychologists, and the pharm industry has done a lot of good for society as well as harm. I'm not even sure where to start. Take, for example, psychologists: a lot of whatever progress has been made in mental health comes from psychology (quantitative measurements, moving away from monolithic, homogenous diagnostic categories, lots of research, even neurobiological research--hell, the head of federal mental health research recently was a psychologist with a neuroscience research focus); the pushback is often from entrenched MD political groups who play off the "trained doctor" stereotype. Pharm research, too, often complains about the overly simplistic disease models, but are required by the FDA to follow them in clinical protocols, further entrenching them (a different former head of NIMH has complained about this). Psychiatrists often are screwed by the health care industry, trying to care for the most ostracized segments of society (see the recent GOP health care bill, which basically gutted mental health care services completely). These sorts of discussions are always frustrating, because they're full of armchair, backseat scientists who are all too-happy to declare bad science, etc. without any solutions themselves. Behavioral health is a very challenging subject, and slapping on physics, chemistry, or mech engineering as some kind of perfect model just doesn't work. The irony is that it's more challenging than those fields in a lot of ways; if someone could just drop down from their physics throne and solve all the mental health problems, it would have been done already. It's been tried, believe me, and what usually happens is they grossly underestimate the complexity of what they're getting involved with.