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There's two separate medical systems, one focused on making money and boosting financials where science does not matter, and the other focused on medical scienc

by VLM 4y ago

There's two separate medical systems, one focused on making money and boosting financials where science does not matter, and the other focused on medical science where at least theoretically the financials do no not matter. Its up to the end user to figure out which system they're interfacing with and act accordingly. Hint, antidepressants make a lot of money for the correct people... People who make treatment decisions based on financials and kickbacks are not going to care about all this "science" and "logic" and "statistics" stuff where their wallet is concerned.

jugg1es 4y ago
I understand where your cynicism comes from but I think it might be overblown in this case. These drugs do help people and psychiatrists want to help. The fact is that we just don't know that much about how higher cognition works. I have a neurobiology degree and was very surprised how little we actually know. We don't know how to really measure things like depression, so we rely on animal models and medieval tests such as "Lets throw this mouse into a bucket and see how long it takes for it to give up treading water". When we are able to take 'in situ' measures in a live person without risking their life, we may start to make progress on better treatments.
SkyPuncher 4y ago
> People who make treatment decisions based on financials and kickbacks are not going to care about all this "science" and "logic" and "statistics" stuff where their wallet is concerned. Can you elaborate on who these people are? You're casting a wide net here. My partner works in mental health. The reality I've observed is mental health is incredibly challenging. Much of it is highly situational and requires hours and hours of extremely time consuming, labor intensive therapy to even begin creating a meaningful treatment plan. If mental health had unlimited time, many providers would love to be able to provide this level of care. In practice, medications are a highly cost-effective means of improving people's mental health. They can increase people's baseline significantly with therapy (time and cost) focusing on rounding out the rough parts. Many patients are not interested in the therapy component if they can get "80%" better with some medication. IMO, this is why we're seeing such a boom in "pill mill" mental health startups. A large portion of the affected population is content being "mostly better, quickly" rather than "fully better, slower".
- d0mine 4y ago
  > medications are highly cost/effective.. You are commenting on the article that says that it is BS. The most upvoted comment on the article at the moment says "it [the ineffectiveness] is old news hardly worth mentioning"
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    No, the article does not say this is BS. The article is about a specific theory on anti-depressants. Not about their ineffectiveness as a whole. > Antidepressants are an effective, NICE recommended treatment for depression This fact remains. It's pretty well known in medicine that we don't really know why anti-depressants work, but they do. Different people react differently to different versions. This article is simply stating that the original "simple" theory of "low serotonin" is not sufficient to explain depression.
    - d0mine 4y ago
      Last time I've looked into it in any detail, there were tendency for any effectiveness to vanish in repeated studies (indistinguishable from placebo).

by VLM 4y ago

jugg1es 4y ago

I understand where your cynicism comes from but I think it might be overblown in this case. These drugs do help people and psychiatrists want to help. The fact is that we just don't know that much about how higher cognition works. I have a neurobiology degree and was very surprised how little we actually know. We don't know how to really measure things like depression, so we rely on animal models and medieval tests such as "Lets throw this mouse into a bucket and see how long it takes for it to give up treading water". When we are able to take 'in situ' measures in a live person without risking their life, we may start to make progress on better treatments.

SkyPuncher 4y ago

> People who make treatment decisions based on financials and kickbacks are not going to care about all this "science" and "logic" and "statistics" stuff where their wallet is concerned. Can you elaborate on who these people are? You're casting a wide net here. My partner works in mental health. The reality I've observed is mental health is incredibly challenging. Much of it is highly situational and requires hours and hours of extremely time consuming, labor intensive therapy to even begin creating a meaningful treatment plan. If mental health had unlimited time, many providers would love to be able to provide this level of care. In practice, medications are a highly cost-effective means of improving people's mental health. They can increase people's baseline significantly with therapy (time and cost) focusing on rounding out the rough parts. Many patients are not interested in the therapy component if they can get "80%" better with some medication. IMO, this is why we're seeing such a boom in "pill mill" mental health startups. A large portion of the affected population is content being "mostly better, quickly" rather than "fully better, slower".

d0mine 4y ago
> medications are highly cost/effective.. You are commenting on the article that says that it is BS. The most upvoted comment on the article at the moment says "it [the ineffectiveness] is old news hardly worth mentioning"
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  No, the article does not say this is BS. The article is about a specific theory on anti-depressants. Not about their ineffectiveness as a whole. > Antidepressants are an effective, NICE recommended treatment for depression This fact remains. It's pretty well known in medicine that we don't really know why anti-depressants work, but they do. Different people react differently to different versions. This article is simply stating that the original "simple" theory of "low serotonin" is not sufficient to explain depression.
  - d0mine 4y ago
    Last time I've looked into it in any detail, there were tendency for any effectiveness to vanish in repeated studies (indistinguishable from placebo).