IMO, it's an unhelpful quote because it's only useful for alternative 'treatments' that have been shown not to work (beyond placebo). It largely ignores the fai

IMO, it's an unhelpful quote because it's only useful for alternative 'treatments' that have been shown not to work (beyond placebo). It largely ignores the fairly large gray area of treatments that have shown promise but haven't been extensively studied enough to become part of mainstream medical practice. If no other treatments are available, investigating these options may be a perfectly rational thing to do (with the appropriate input from a genuine medical professional, not a random/unqualified 'alternative' practitioner). Personally, I use caffeine, in addition to an SSRI, as an OCD treatment, based on a single, small (n=12 for the caffeine group)[0] clinical trial. Clearly the evidence isn't there to declare it a viable treatment -- it could easily be placebo[1] and/or prove to be detrimental for other patients -- but my doctor and I concluded that the risk of trialling it was close enough to zero in my specific circumstances to give it a shot. Thus far, it has provided a noticeable subjective improvement day-to-day. (Note to any other OCD patients - I'm NOT suggesting you should try this, in part due to the anxiogenic properties of caffeine) Of course that doesn't mean we should just throw open the doors to the various snake-oil pushers (especially where well-proven interventions exist), but IMO going too far in the other direction would also be a mistake. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19573497 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19573497 [1] Something I personally doubt, as other alternative treatments (including those I have suggested) have had either no effect or worsened the condition, but of course there is no way for me to rigorously test this.