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Some years ago I was told that neurology had started to quietly replace psychiatry, overwriting its poor reproducibility and conjectures with testable, reproduc

Some years ago I was told that neurology had started to quietly replace psychiatry, overwriting its poor reproducibility and conjectures with testable, reproducible, and consistent chemical and physical explanations. I hope it continues.

zachr 8y ago
I have heard very little in the way of hard sciences finding more robust ways to diagnose or treat mental illnesses. Source?
basetop 8y ago
I don't know why you are being downvoted. The famed neuroscientist ramanachandram had a story about how psychiastrists were assigning woman with all kinds of disparate diagnoses for her occasional erratic behavior. Turns out neuroscientists found out she was having small strokes and once they fixed it with brain surgery, her erratic behavior went away. Psychiatry is like fixing a software bug by telling the customer to simply avoid doing things that causes the bug rather than correcting the actual code and fixing the software. I know some people don't like reductionist reasoning, but the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe that all psychological problems are ultimately a brain problem. We just don't know enough about the brain yet to fix many of those problems.
- tokai 8y ago
  I would guess it's because it is an huge simplification of the relationship between the two disciplines. The fields of science are not discrete.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  I’m not sure if all psychological problems are brain problems, at least not at any level that we can interact with at a meaningful level yet. Example: let’s say you had a moderately abusive parent. The result is low self esteem but nothing diagnostic worthy. While I’m sure there’s a concrete neurological effect that might be measurable, but I seriously doubt that neuroscientists would have the tools today to interdict and make a difference in the way that psychology might. Now I do agree that neurology is replacing psychology, I just don’t think it has replaced it yet.
doitLP 8y ago
You're right. Unfortunately, it's the conditions that lie in the realm of conjecture and opinion that are the province of psychiatry. Sometimes the conjecture is good, sometimes it's not. When the actual biological cause for a condition is found, it moves over to being treated by other medical specialties and loses its psychiatric significance. Parkinson's, now treated by neurologists is a one such example. Hepatic encephalopathy from liver failure, which can cause dramatic personality changes, is another. Sometimes its changing social conditions that help recategorize a diagnosis. Case in point, the vote to remove homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis from the DSM in 1973. Psychiatry is the catch-all until we actually figure out how to fix something. You can extrapolate this: if something is a psychiatric diagnosis, theories as to cause and treatment are actually hypotheses, sometimes uncomfortably out of date. If the treatment works for you, that's excellent. But if it doesn't, realize you're dealing with a bug in the most complex object in the universe. Hitting it with a hammer might not work.

zachr 8y ago

I have heard very little in the way of hard sciences finding more robust ways to diagnose or treat mental illnesses. Source?

basetop 8y ago

I don't know why you are being downvoted. The famed neuroscientist ramanachandram had a story about how psychiastrists were assigning woman with all kinds of disparate diagnoses for her occasional erratic behavior. Turns out neuroscientists found out she was having small strokes and once they fixed it with brain surgery, her erratic behavior went away. Psychiatry is like fixing a software bug by telling the customer to simply avoid doing things that causes the bug rather than correcting the actual code and fixing the software. I know some people don't like reductionist reasoning, but the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe that all psychological problems are ultimately a brain problem. We just don't know enough about the brain yet to fix many of those problems.

tokai 8y ago
I would guess it's because it is an huge simplification of the relationship between the two disciplines. The fields of science are not discrete.
village-idiot 8y ago
I’m not sure if all psychological problems are brain problems, at least not at any level that we can interact with at a meaningful level yet. Example: let’s say you had a moderately abusive parent. The result is low self esteem but nothing diagnostic worthy. While I’m sure there’s a concrete neurological effect that might be measurable, but I seriously doubt that neuroscientists would have the tools today to interdict and make a difference in the way that psychology might. Now I do agree that neurology is replacing psychology, I just don’t think it has replaced it yet.

doitLP 8y ago

You're right. Unfortunately, it's the conditions that lie in the realm of conjecture and opinion that are the province of psychiatry. Sometimes the conjecture is good, sometimes it's not. When the actual biological cause for a condition is found, it moves over to being treated by other medical specialties and loses its psychiatric significance. Parkinson's, now treated by neurologists is a one such example. Hepatic encephalopathy from liver failure, which can cause dramatic personality changes, is another. Sometimes its changing social conditions that help recategorize a diagnosis. Case in point, the vote to remove homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis from the DSM in 1973. Psychiatry is the catch-all until we actually figure out how to fix something. You can extrapolate this: if something is a psychiatric diagnosis, theories as to cause and treatment are actually hypotheses, sometimes uncomfortably out of date. If the treatment works for you, that's excellent. But if it doesn't, realize you're dealing with a bug in the most complex object in the universe. Hitting it with a hammer might not work.