>What's the alternative? Prayer circles? Ayahuasca tourist traps? Cannabis? Homeopathy? Give me a break. PPD aside, if we're talking about the issues that psyc

>What's the alternative? Prayer circles? Ayahuasca tourist traps? Cannabis? Homeopathy? Give me a break. PPD aside, if we're talking about the issues that psychiatry seeks to alleviate, every one of those 'solutions' has had thousands of advocates/adherents/patients that claim to have gained positive effect. and before I get considered a proponent of any of those; i'm not -- but I recognize the cohort of people who claim to have gained benefit just as I recognize the group who claim to have benefited from psychiatry. mental health needs not be a monopoly; many people go through issues that they fix through specific personal events or patterns that are specific only to them. You can complain about the style of thinking that you encounter on HN without disparaging the things that have helped people outside of clinical settings. Mental health and well-being is one of the most mysterious things that we study, if a suicide or otherwise bad decision is staved off by chanting in makeup and visiting exotic locations then so be it, that's what worked for them. And another aside : psychiatry will never incorporate extreme things that may help certain individuals, nor should they -- but that means that the breadth of things that are helpful is greater than the breadth of things that will ever fall within the umbrella of clinical mental health; so you should probably hold off on judging things based on whether or not the industry has adopted them.