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Much, if not all, of mental health is based on theories and assumptions." "It's thought that..." when referring to how medications work. Let's just agree that

Much, if not all, of mental health is based on theories and assumptions." "It's thought that..." when referring to how medications work. Let's just agree that we all know nothing about mental health.

vkreso 7y ago
Everything is based on theories and assumptions. Everything is a model and all models are wrong. The problem with psychology is that it is a much more disjointed science than others (and has been for a long time). You have islands of logic and some overlapping theories but all of them do not follow a unified framework. It is similar to how modern physics is trying to connect quantum theory and gravity. I'd argue that the scale of such disjointedness correlates with the power of predictability of phenomena in a certain field. It is therefore true that we know nothing and at the same time something about mental health. Connecting and integrating psychology through evolutionary psych, behavioral theories, cognitive sciences and such is an ongoing area of research and an example of an effort which reduces disjointedness of a field which may result in more succesful predictions and deeper knowledge about mental health.
PaulHoule 7y ago
We know a lot. If there is a comprehensive theory it is that mental disorders and developmental disabilities come in layers. You might have a genetic predisposition to certain problems, have that exacerbated by traumas, but learn how to compensate for them in some ways. You might do badly at certain things or certain situations but if you have support from other people, understand the difficulty, etc. you can do O.K. The big trouble I think is that mental illness and developmental disabilities interact with the expectations that people have about others. For instance much of the satisfaction parents get out of parenting is using their children as "self objects"; they want to dress them up, show them off, bask in their accomplishments, etc. An autistic child can't do that for them and they find that hard to accept. The marketing of SSRI's is also distorted. They are prescribed a lot by primary care docs who need to be on top of a wide range of medical problems and can't be experts on mental health too. That is a good thing because they help people and it can be hard to get real help from a specialist. Depression has many symptoms and for many people SSRIs help some symptoms but not others. For me, for instance, SSRIs help me control my emotions in situations where I might get overwhelmed and yell at people. I believe that they increase my self-control as opposed to suppress my emotions. I have other symptoms that SSRIs don't help with, but I do feel like they've helped me a lot at being a parent.
- pygy_ 7y ago
  > We know a lot. Yet we know very little, like, we knew how to make fire before Lavoiser discovered the role of Oxygen in combustion. The various paradigms we use are approximate, not unlike humor and miasma theories were of some help before we understood physiology and discovered the existence of germs. The main theories of the 20th century (psychoanalysis and chemical imbalance) have been steadily eroded by research, but are still have far too much importance in clinic. > You might have a genetic predisposition to certain problems, have that exacerbated by traumas. Once we understand what genes and genes circuits are involved, and how trauma makes it worse, we'll be getting somewhere.
  - PaulHoule 7y ago
    On some level. There is a lot of social complexity that means we may not take advantage of those facts. For instance we might get better drugs and other treatments but will that really help the people who are crapping on the street in San Francisco? Autism in particular challenges the assumptions of society. The one thing aspies really can't do is "see the emperor's clothes". In asperger's day they did not get along well with National Socialism, today they have problems with neoliberalism. You might fantasize that getting real help for aspies would increase their productivity a lot, mean they pay more taxes and make the help profitable for society, maybe even bend the curve of our civilization. From another viewpoint there is more talent than there is opportunity. Maybe Aspies are 1% of the people in the top 2% of IQ, salvaging them means a small increase of the talent pool, and if you at the top of some insanely competitive pyramid (etc. academia, business) why spend money to make it more competitive for your kids... Similarly, social structures tend to constrain the performance of science. We create the script that there is a "depression gene" and people build a career around that, maybe somebody wins a Nobel Prize, but really science is "what scientists do" and is about making stories that make sense to some people at a certain time and saying that some people are winners and others are losers. Go look at a Cochraine report on this or that and you'll see that 5000 studies got done, maybe 5 of those were done right, and there aren't enough samples to really be conclusive. Astronomy is like this. We "know a lot" but every time somebody does a new study of Cepheid variables we find the cosmic distance scale isn't what we thought it was, the cosmological models are broken, etc. That is, science manufactures a certainty that isn't there. "Reason" is often a label people use to attack other people. "Reason" magazine for instance has that name to say that socialists, labor unions, regulators, etc. are not "reasonable" and shouldn't be listened to.
deleted 7y ago
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thatoneuser 7y ago
We clearly know a lot. Not everything but you're lumping things way too black and white.

Much, if not all, of mental health is based on theories and assumptions." "It's thought that..." when referring to how medications work. Let's just agree that we all know nothing about mental health.

vkreso 7y ago

Everything is based on theories and assumptions. Everything is a model and all models are wrong. The problem with psychology is that it is a much more disjointed science than others (and has been for a long time). You have islands of logic and some overlapping theories but all of them do not follow a unified framework. It is similar to how modern physics is trying to connect quantum theory and gravity. I'd argue that the scale of such disjointedness correlates with the power of predictability of phenomena in a certain field. It is therefore true that we know nothing and at the same time something about mental health. Connecting and integrating psychology through evolutionary psych, behavioral theories, cognitive sciences and such is an ongoing area of research and an example of an effort which reduces disjointedness of a field which may result in more succesful predictions and deeper knowledge about mental health.

PaulHoule 7y ago

We know a lot. If there is a comprehensive theory it is that mental disorders and developmental disabilities come in layers. You might have a genetic predisposition to certain problems, have that exacerbated by traumas, but learn how to compensate for them in some ways. You might do badly at certain things or certain situations but if you have support from other people, understand the difficulty, etc. you can do O.K. The big trouble I think is that mental illness and developmental disabilities interact with the expectations that people have about others. For instance much of the satisfaction parents get out of parenting is using their children as "self objects"; they want to dress them up, show them off, bask in their accomplishments, etc. An autistic child can't do that for them and they find that hard to accept. The marketing of SSRI's is also distorted. They are prescribed a lot by primary care docs who need to be on top of a wide range of medical problems and can't be experts on mental health too. That is a good thing because they help people and it can be hard to get real help from a specialist. Depression has many symptoms and for many people SSRIs help some symptoms but not others. For me, for instance, SSRIs help me control my emotions in situations where I might get overwhelmed and yell at people. I believe that they increase my self-control as opposed to suppress my emotions. I have other symptoms that SSRIs don't help with, but I do feel like they've helped me a lot at being a parent.

pygy_ 7y ago
> We know a lot. Yet we know very little, like, we knew how to make fire before Lavoiser discovered the role of Oxygen in combustion. The various paradigms we use are approximate, not unlike humor and miasma theories were of some help before we understood physiology and discovered the existence of germs. The main theories of the 20th century (psychoanalysis and chemical imbalance) have been steadily eroded by research, but are still have far too much importance in clinic. > You might have a genetic predisposition to certain problems, have that exacerbated by traumas. Once we understand what genes and genes circuits are involved, and how trauma makes it worse, we'll be getting somewhere.
- PaulHoule 7y ago
  On some level. There is a lot of social complexity that means we may not take advantage of those facts. For instance we might get better drugs and other treatments but will that really help the people who are crapping on the street in San Francisco? Autism in particular challenges the assumptions of society. The one thing aspies really can't do is "see the emperor's clothes". In asperger's day they did not get along well with National Socialism, today they have problems with neoliberalism. You might fantasize that getting real help for aspies would increase their productivity a lot, mean they pay more taxes and make the help profitable for society, maybe even bend the curve of our civilization. From another viewpoint there is more talent than there is opportunity. Maybe Aspies are 1% of the people in the top 2% of IQ, salvaging them means a small increase of the talent pool, and if you at the top of some insanely competitive pyramid (etc. academia, business) why spend money to make it more competitive for your kids... Similarly, social structures tend to constrain the performance of science. We create the script that there is a "depression gene" and people build a career around that, maybe somebody wins a Nobel Prize, but really science is "what scientists do" and is about making stories that make sense to some people at a certain time and saying that some people are winners and others are losers. Go look at a Cochraine report on this or that and you'll see that 5000 studies got done, maybe 5 of those were done right, and there aren't enough samples to really be conclusive. Astronomy is like this. We "know a lot" but every time somebody does a new study of Cepheid variables we find the cosmic distance scale isn't what we thought it was, the cosmological models are broken, etc. That is, science manufactures a certainty that isn't there. "Reason" is often a label people use to attack other people. "Reason" magazine for instance has that name to say that socialists, labor unions, regulators, etc. are not "reasonable" and shouldn't be listened to.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thatoneuser 7y ago

We clearly know a lot. Not everything but you're lumping things way too black and white.