A lot of diseases are treated symptomatically. Every time the doctor prescribes aspirin/Tylenol/ibuprofen, rest & fluids, cough suppressants, or anti-emetics,

A lot of diseases are treated symptomatically. Every time the doctor prescribes aspirin/Tylenol/ibuprofen, rest & fluids, cough suppressants, or anti-emetics, you're treating the symptoms. Rest, isolation, and IV fluids for Ebola is treating the symptoms, and does it very effectively, to the extent that the death rate from Ebola is 10% in developed countries but 80% in the DRC. Psychodynamics, CBT, DBT, and most other types of talk therapy treats symptoms, though I think what we're finding out about the mind is that there's a bit of a causal loop and if you treat the symptoms long enough that is the root cause. To the extend that medication treats root causes of psychiatric illnesses it does so in a very blunt way; wasn't there just a HN comment to the effect of 'People like to say things like "seratonin is the drug that makes you happy," or "oxytocin is the drug that makes you feel love," or "dopamine is the brain's reward mechanism," but those statements are simplified to the point of being wrong.' [1]. Our regular treatments for injuries like burns, acute organ failure like pancreatitis, or physical trauma like car accidents is to treat the symptoms until the body has time to heal itself. Oftentimes the root cause in medicine is something we can't fix, and sometimes something we can't even identify. Biology's the domain of complex causes, where few things have a single cause and a lot of things are interlocking systems governed by homeostasis. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21519901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21519901