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Two quotes from the article: 1. "Eight showed improvements in reported levels of depression, with four of them improving so much they were no longer classed as

by lutusp 13y ago

Two quotes from the article: 1. "Eight showed improvements in reported levels of depression, with four of them improving so much they were no longer classed as depressed. Some responded within six hours of the first infusion of ketamine." 2. "Lead researcher Dr Rupert McShane said: 'It really is dramatic for some people, it's the sort of thing really that makes it worth doing psychiatry, it's a really wonderful thing to see.'" [emphasis added] Wait ... what? Saying, "Take this pill and you'll feel better" isn't how psychiatry is (or was) defined. That isn't psychiatry, it's pharmacology. Also, none of the treatments, the old ones like talk therapy, or the new ones including drugs and/or deep-brain stimulation, suggest or identify a cause for depression. So far we've only been treating the symptoms of a disease whose cause we don't know. I long for the good old days, the days of science, when we identified the cause of a disease, then designed a cure based on our understanding of its cause. This isn't a cure, it's a symptomatic treatment, and to remain effective it would have to continue forever, reliant on a drug whose mechanism is as unknown as the thing being treated, just as with ADHD and PTSD. I'm sure Big Pharma is very upset that another perpetual market for drugs is opening up.

jonahx 13y ago
The "good old days" of psychiatry were a far cry from "the days of science."
- lutusp 13y ago
  Yes -- as true now as it was then. But moving away from talk therapy toward symptomatic drug treatment moves neither toward nor away from science. Also, by "the good old days" I was referring to the medical practice of first identifying a disease's cause, then designing a cure. Most mental illnesses don't have this property, which open them up to exploitation by Big Pharma.
  - jonahx 13y ago
    Agree that things haven't progressed much toward an ideal of rigorous science, but the process you're lauding of first identifying a cause and then designing a cure doesn't mean much when you're just making up stories for both things, which is essentially what those good old days were.
  - psloth 13y ago
    Of course scientists are trying to identify the underlying causes of mental illnesses. They're even making a lot of progress, but the brain is just unbelievably complex. In the meantime, treatments are found by trial and error. Testing whether a drug treats a disease's symptoms can be scientific even if you don't know how the drug actually works.

by lutusp 13y ago

jonahx 13y ago

The "good old days" of psychiatry were a far cry from "the days of science."

lutusp 13y ago
Yes -- as true now as it was then. But moving away from talk therapy toward symptomatic drug treatment moves neither toward nor away from science. Also, by "the good old days" I was referring to the medical practice of first identifying a disease's cause, then designing a cure. Most mental illnesses don't have this property, which open them up to exploitation by Big Pharma.
- jonahx 13y ago
  Agree that things haven't progressed much toward an ideal of rigorous science, but the process you're lauding of first identifying a cause and then designing a cure doesn't mean much when you're just making up stories for both things, which is essentially what those good old days were.
- psloth 13y ago
  Of course scientists are trying to identify the underlying causes of mental illnesses. They're even making a lot of progress, but the brain is just unbelievably complex. In the meantime, treatments are found by trial and error. Testing whether a drug treats a disease's symptoms can be scientific even if you don't know how the drug actually works.