5 ms·

There are lots of therapies available for anxiety disorders -- medication, CBT, talk therapy, biofeedback. Some of the psychedelic therapies that are getting of

by schoen 4y ago

There are lots of therapies available for anxiety disorders -- medication, CBT, talk therapy, biofeedback. Some of the psychedelic therapies that are getting official trials now also show promise for anxiety. I hope you'll find something that works well for you!

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
- skyyler 4y ago
  CBT is backed by clinical evidence. What makes you think it's pseudo-scientific?
  - n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
    Clinical means nothing. I can open a chiropractic clinic and create “clinical” evidence all day long. It’s still pseudo-science if the results aren’t replicable. Studies surrounding CBT (and the field of psychology as a whole) are not replicable. They are, almost always, based on converting qualitative metrics (how you feel) and filtering them through a designed survey in order to convert these qualitative, subjective abstractions into something that resembles something quantitative and scientific. The result is a field has with a ~40% replicability rate in it’s most “prestigious” journals. So, yes, the “professionals” have PhDs and use the doctor salutation. They’re not scientists. They’re just pretending. Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” Good luck finding a study indicating that any significant subset of “depressed” people got over their issues as a result of the CBT itself with a HARD LIFE OUTCOME as the point of investigation. It’s all subjective feelings filtered through qualitative 1 thru 10 surveys. Patients never improve. They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it, often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human. Psychotropic intervention in this field is barbaric and pseudoscientific. If there is any justice in this world, it will be held in the same esteem as lobotomy in the future.
    - skyyler 4y ago
      This could be interesting reading for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ I'm still not sure what is pseudoscientific about "People with psychological problems can learn ways of coping with the problems, thereby relieving their symptoms." That's what CBT is...
      - n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
        The assessment of their psychological “problem” (often too broad to even be considered a condition) is pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The assessment of the success of CBT is also pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The result is a field with 40% replicability of journal results. And you share a meta analysis of these pseudo-scientific “studies”. Add another layer of abstraction to the nonsense.
        skyyler 4y ago
        Ahhhhh, all psychology is pseudoscience to you. That makes sense now. That's completely fair, and I don't want to interact with that at all. Have a nice day!
        ketzo 4y ago
        Why do you completely discount qualitative evaluations? If I say I feel shitty all the time, and then I go to therapy, and I say that I feel less shitty all the time... why is that invalid data?
    - anna_hope 4y ago
      "Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” That's actually exactly how they measure the efficacy of many psychological and psychiatric interventions for chronic mental health conditions, to the point of it being almost laughable, like if you managed to get a job or get better grades, that must mean you are doing better, everything else be damned. But I suppose that's the most objective metric there is. "They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it" This is anecdotal, but every psychiatrist I've been to has attempted to titrate down the dose or remove a medication from my regimen if I've been on it a while, and observe if the improvements from those can be maintained. Similarly, most of the therapists I have worked with proactively suggested reducing the frequency of sessions once they've observed improvement. "often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human." It's attitudes like these that contributed to me failing to seek the proper mental health treatment until later in my life, until my very real, very observable, non-nebulous conditions reached a life-threatening degree. Something that is "normal" for some people some of the time can be disabling or life-threatening if experienced by someone most of the time. Most people experience physical pain at some points in their lives, but if you are in serious pain nearly every day, you would be right to seek treatment — and no, we don't have perfect tests for all kinds of pain either. The fields of psychiatry and psychology have many problems, but being a pseudoscience is not one of them.
  - contravariant 4y ago
    They're dismissing 'medicine' as pseudo-science, I think we can ignore their claims.
  - tbalsam 4y ago
    I think the OC you're replying too is far out of line and replying on emotion (personal opinion, I am too haha), but I do find frustration at CBT being used as a modality for everyone and anyone, where it actively exacerbates symptoms for a set of the population (complex trauma survivors) that looks like the target audience (mild/moderate anxiety/depression), which can create a watershed effect making the less struggling people better off and the more struggling people hurt and disillusioned with the system. I wish there was enough coverage and recognition to have multiple pathways, or some kind of effective gated treatment going to something like CBT or over to something like Janina Fisher's empirical work practically extending IFS in a nearly universally palatable way (seriously, I'm very impressed with her work and it's among my favorites that I've ever read in the field. I keep coming away with stuff that blows my socks off. Clinically-discovered gold! :D)
- gffrd 4y ago
  What other approaches do you propose?
- simplify 4y ago
  There is no science that helps stop someone from hating themselves. Worthless comment.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > There is no science that helps stop someone from hating themselves If that were true, wouldn't that prove his point?
    - simplify 4y ago
      His point is worthless. Just because you can't scientifically measure something doesn't mean it doesn't improve people's lives. The underlying assumption here is "if it's not scientific, then it's not helpful", which is extremely stupid.
      - bheadmaster 4y ago
        I understood his point as "it isn't scientific, therefore we can't be sure it's helpful, therefore it shouldn't be the go-to advice for anyone suffering from mental issues". His phrasing is aggressive and generalizing, and he should've probably used a better choice of words. But it's a point I somewhat agree with. I've personally tried different kinds of therapy for my issues, years at a time, and I can say with certainty that my time was wasted. I also personally know multiple people who've had similar experience. One reply I can imagine is "but maybe you didn't put enough effort/spend enough time" - in which case I'd like to ask, in what way does that argument differ from the religious argument of "if God doesn't help you, you didn't pray enough"? Another reply I can imagine is "it doesn't work deterministically, psychology/psychiatry is not an exact science" - in which case it would prove the original comment's point. It might as well all be bloody hogwash, and yet people recommend it all the time because it's "science".
Rimintil 4y ago
Another therapy is a ganglion nerve block.
- intelVISA 4y ago
  I need this for dealing with undocumented Win32 APIs
- tbalsam 4y ago
  I'm rather growing to dislike this therapy as it just separates two parts of the brain, effectively, which can provide temporary relief while allowing for the mutual information drift between them to grow, which further can exacerbate the internal fragmentation experienced in trauma survivors. DID already has this kind of soft separation as a coping mechanism, and much of therapy is oriented in stabilizing, then undoing the block. I guess I'm biased but I very much lean towards methods that force interconnection while providing emotional pain numbing/relief (Ketamine), or more high-flying methods that force the brain to a higher temporary state of functional connectivity and by some of the consequences of massively increased entropy, chip away at the problem. I guess the other part is that seems to be soft form of the conservation of energy when it comes to the information of grief and grief processing. Unprocessed grief has to go somewhere and oftentimes it's where you'll see people after a few decades completely break down from the overload (and in the years it takes to decompress and manually process the grief -- Pete Walker is one expert that I refer to who's pretty well-respected all around). I guess it's up to one's belief as to whether the neuron group on the other side of the ganglion nerve block is conscious enough to suffer. I've had enough experience with DID persons to be extraordinarily uncomfortable with any kind of extended "walling off" strategy, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant on the surface that part of the brain may be.

by schoen 4y ago

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago

skyyler 4y ago
CBT is backed by clinical evidence. What makes you think it's pseudo-scientific?
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
  Clinical means nothing. I can open a chiropractic clinic and create “clinical” evidence all day long. It’s still pseudo-science if the results aren’t replicable. Studies surrounding CBT (and the field of psychology as a whole) are not replicable. They are, almost always, based on converting qualitative metrics (how you feel) and filtering them through a designed survey in order to convert these qualitative, subjective abstractions into something that resembles something quantitative and scientific. The result is a field has with a ~40% replicability rate in it’s most “prestigious” journals. So, yes, the “professionals” have PhDs and use the doctor salutation. They’re not scientists. They’re just pretending. Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” Good luck finding a study indicating that any significant subset of “depressed” people got over their issues as a result of the CBT itself with a HARD LIFE OUTCOME as the point of investigation. It’s all subjective feelings filtered through qualitative 1 thru 10 surveys. Patients never improve. They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it, often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human. Psychotropic intervention in this field is barbaric and pseudoscientific. If there is any justice in this world, it will be held in the same esteem as lobotomy in the future.
  - skyyler 4y ago
    This could be interesting reading for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ I'm still not sure what is pseudoscientific about "People with psychological problems can learn ways of coping with the problems, thereby relieving their symptoms." That's what CBT is...
    - n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
      The assessment of their psychological “problem” (often too broad to even be considered a condition) is pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The assessment of the success of CBT is also pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The result is a field with 40% replicability of journal results. And you share a meta analysis of these pseudo-scientific “studies”. Add another layer of abstraction to the nonsense.
      - skyyler 4y ago
        Ahhhhh, all psychology is pseudoscience to you. That makes sense now. That's completely fair, and I don't want to interact with that at all. Have a nice day!
      - ketzo 4y ago
        Why do you completely discount qualitative evaluations? If I say I feel shitty all the time, and then I go to therapy, and I say that I feel less shitty all the time... why is that invalid data?
  - anna_hope 4y ago
    "Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” That's actually exactly how they measure the efficacy of many psychological and psychiatric interventions for chronic mental health conditions, to the point of it being almost laughable, like if you managed to get a job or get better grades, that must mean you are doing better, everything else be damned. But I suppose that's the most objective metric there is. "They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it" This is anecdotal, but every psychiatrist I've been to has attempted to titrate down the dose or remove a medication from my regimen if I've been on it a while, and observe if the improvements from those can be maintained. Similarly, most of the therapists I have worked with proactively suggested reducing the frequency of sessions once they've observed improvement. "often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human." It's attitudes like these that contributed to me failing to seek the proper mental health treatment until later in my life, until my very real, very observable, non-nebulous conditions reached a life-threatening degree. Something that is "normal" for some people some of the time can be disabling or life-threatening if experienced by someone most of the time. Most people experience physical pain at some points in their lives, but if you are in serious pain nearly every day, you would be right to seek treatment — and no, we don't have perfect tests for all kinds of pain either. The fields of psychiatry and psychology have many problems, but being a pseudoscience is not one of them.
- contravariant 4y ago
  They're dismissing 'medicine' as pseudo-science, I think we can ignore their claims.
- tbalsam 4y ago
  I think the OC you're replying too is far out of line and replying on emotion (personal opinion, I am too haha), but I do find frustration at CBT being used as a modality for everyone and anyone, where it actively exacerbates symptoms for a set of the population (complex trauma survivors) that looks like the target audience (mild/moderate anxiety/depression), which can create a watershed effect making the less struggling people better off and the more struggling people hurt and disillusioned with the system. I wish there was enough coverage and recognition to have multiple pathways, or some kind of effective gated treatment going to something like CBT or over to something like Janina Fisher's empirical work practically extending IFS in a nearly universally palatable way (seriously, I'm very impressed with her work and it's among my favorites that I've ever read in the field. I keep coming away with stuff that blows my socks off. Clinically-discovered gold! :D)
gffrd 4y ago
What other approaches do you propose?
simplify 4y ago
There is no science that helps stop someone from hating themselves. Worthless comment.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > There is no science that helps stop someone from hating themselves If that were true, wouldn't that prove his point?
  - simplify 4y ago
    His point is worthless. Just because you can't scientifically measure something doesn't mean it doesn't improve people's lives. The underlying assumption here is "if it's not scientific, then it's not helpful", which is extremely stupid.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      I understood his point as "it isn't scientific, therefore we can't be sure it's helpful, therefore it shouldn't be the go-to advice for anyone suffering from mental issues". His phrasing is aggressive and generalizing, and he should've probably used a better choice of words. But it's a point I somewhat agree with. I've personally tried different kinds of therapy for my issues, years at a time, and I can say with certainty that my time was wasted. I also personally know multiple people who've had similar experience. One reply I can imagine is "but maybe you didn't put enough effort/spend enough time" - in which case I'd like to ask, in what way does that argument differ from the religious argument of "if God doesn't help you, you didn't pray enough"? Another reply I can imagine is "it doesn't work deterministically, psychology/psychiatry is not an exact science" - in which case it would prove the original comment's point. It might as well all be bloody hogwash, and yet people recommend it all the time because it's "science".

Rimintil 4y ago

Another therapy is a ganglion nerve block.

intelVISA 4y ago
I need this for dealing with undocumented Win32 APIs
tbalsam 4y ago
I'm rather growing to dislike this therapy as it just separates two parts of the brain, effectively, which can provide temporary relief while allowing for the mutual information drift between them to grow, which further can exacerbate the internal fragmentation experienced in trauma survivors. DID already has this kind of soft separation as a coping mechanism, and much of therapy is oriented in stabilizing, then undoing the block. I guess I'm biased but I very much lean towards methods that force interconnection while providing emotional pain numbing/relief (Ketamine), or more high-flying methods that force the brain to a higher temporary state of functional connectivity and by some of the consequences of massively increased entropy, chip away at the problem. I guess the other part is that seems to be soft form of the conservation of energy when it comes to the information of grief and grief processing. Unprocessed grief has to go somewhere and oftentimes it's where you'll see people after a few decades completely break down from the overload (and in the years it takes to decompress and manually process the grief -- Pete Walker is one expert that I refer to who's pretty well-respected all around). I guess it's up to one's belief as to whether the neuron group on the other side of the ganglion nerve block is conscious enough to suffer. I've had enough experience with DID persons to be extraordinarily uncomfortable with any kind of extended "walling off" strategy, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant on the surface that part of the brain may be.