/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5678789]

What do you think of psychiatry /sci/?

Legitimate medical science or dangerous pseudoscience quackery?

What do you think of all the groups out there against psychiatry, run of the mill conspiracy theorists or people worth listening to?

[Anonymous No.5678836]

bullshit and fuck those guys too

[Anonymous No.5678850]

>asking autists if psychiatry is a science

[Anonymous No.5678865]

>What do you think of psychiatry /sci/?
Too subjective to be a science, it's a pseudoscience at best and potentially lethal lies at worst.

>What do you think of all the groups out there against psychiatry

Some of them are ok but a lot of them border on the fanatical.

[Anonymous No.5678898]

Soccer moms and should-be business majors giving drugs to people with mental disorders? No thanks.

[Anonymous No.5678910]

>>5678898
Why the fuck not? It's trying to cure a biological imbalance.

[Anonymous No.5678919]

>>5678898
>soccer moms and should-be business majors
you do realize psychiatrists are MDs, right? Granted they typically aren't the best in their class, it's not like any idiot can become a psychiatrist

[Anonymous No.5678935]

Psychiatry is a legitimate medical field and gets a bad reputation from pseudointellectuals that don't understand it and biased media.

[Anonymous No.5678959]

>>5678789

maybe you confuse psychiatry with psychology?

Psychiatry deals with very real chemical inbalances in the brain.
Expect to see very serious advances in this field as the brain scanning technology progresses.

[Anonymous No.5678961]

>>5678919
>it's not like any idiot can become a psychiatrist
So you're saying it takes a special kind.

[Anonymous No.5678964]

>>5678959
Looks like someone is projecting

OP didn't say a damn thing against anything

[Anonymous No.5678972]

>>5678961
ha.

[Anonymous No.5678979]

>>5678959
>Psychiatry deals with very real chemical inbalances in the brain.
Wrong, it deals with opinions and subjectivity.

>brain scanning

Show me these scans and guarantee me that every single person suffering a specific "inbalance" will have a similar scan, if you can't then your scans are worthless. If you don't have the scans yet because you'll magic them into being *someday* then show me what physical evidence you guys DO have to make diagnoses.

[Anonymous No.5678995]

>>5678959
>Psychiatry deals with very real chemical inbalances in the brain.
No, these kinds of claims are exactly what make it pseudoscientific.

They talk about real neurotransmitters, but they don't make falsifiable theories about them and seriously test them. Instead, they just use it as a basis for handwaving.

When they give you a drug to increase your serotonin levels, it's not because they have any good reason to believe that the problem is that your serotonin is too low. And indeed, they can verify that the drug does affect your serotonin as intended (or rather, better doctors can, who do perform objective diagnostic tests, at least on corpses), but it generally does not simply fix the condition.

The ones who aren't just crazy themselves (and this is less than you'd think) know full well that they're not addressing the cause of the condition, but simply dosing people with psychoactive drugs that they've learned through experience are "helpful". Mind you, "helpful" can include things such as rendering the patient too dazed to be disruptive, and being an acceptable, plausibly deniable way to inflict suffering on the patient, as a means of coercion. Other "helpful" effects of drugs, are simply making the patient feel good, or more alert, or more relaxed -- essentially recreational drugs used for their recreational effects -- so the patient will keep coming back to appointments, and claim that their problems are being fixed, so they can keep taking the drugs.

Psychiatry tends to be more about making the psychiatrist's life better than the patient's.

[Anonymous No.5679050]

>>5678979
>guarantee that every single person has the same symptoms

Except that's impossible for a single reason: Each person's brain develops according to their own experiences, so each person's brain is unique. Hell, plenty of regular diseases will often present with different or obscure symptoms: "Flu-like symptoms" covers just about every virus known to man. The lack of a perfect diagnostic is no reason to discount the value of psychiatry.

>>5678995
That is laughable. There is a mountain of evidence connecting specific neurotransmitters to specific behaviors. You mention testing for serotonin levels, but blood tests aren't always representative of what's going on in the CNS. Reuptake is just as important as the amount present.

[Anonymous No.5679057]

>>5679050
>each person's brain is unique.

So you admit it's subjective bullcrap? ok.

>Hell, plenty of regular diseases will often present with different or obscure symptoms: "Flu-like symptoms" covers just about every virus known to man.

That's fine, except I'm not asking you for a small town doctors opinion and all of those regular diseases can be narrowed down through objective testing that will always return the same result so long as the variables remain constant.

>The lack of a perfect diagnostic is no reason to discount the value of psychiatry.

I'm discounting psychiatry for a lack of objective diagnosis, not because a diagnosis is imperfect.

[Anonymous No.5679059]

>>5678898
>>5678979
>>5678995
>>5679057
so according to you guys I should stop giving my senile great grand father his medicine

[Anonymous No.5679073]

>>5679057
>I'm discounting psychiatry for a lack of objective diagnosis, not because a diagnosis is imperfect.
And what kind of diagnosis would you consider to be "objective"? Many diagnoses in medicine are made off of entirely subjective data.

Medical diagnoses are all based on looking for telltale sets of symptoms. These symptoms are always the consequence of the affected system acting abnormally, and thus the symptoms reflect the function of the affected system. We all know what that looks like with most organs of the body. The brain is special though. The brain's function isn't physiological (save for a few exceptions) but behavioral. As a result, any disease that affects the brain is going to manifest as abnormal behavior. When the behavior in question is low level (like motor control) or caused by physical trauma, we have it covered by neurology. When the behavior in question is high level (like emotional and decision making) then we call it psychiatry.

It's impossible to diagnosis a psychiatric illness with "objective measurements". To do that you would have to go digging around in a person's brain which you just can't do every time you want to make a diagnosis for obvious reasons. Just like when you want to diagnose diabetes you don't take a fucking pancreas biopsy or look at the expression of insulin receptors on individual cells, you just look for high levels of blood glucose and a few other signs and say "yup, that's diabeetus".

[Anonymous No.5679077]

>>5679073
>It's impossible to diagnosis a psychiatric illness with "objective measurements". To do that you would have to go digging around in a person's brain which you just can't do every time you want to make a diagnosis for obvious reasons. Just like when you want to diagnose diabetes you don't take a fucking pancreas biopsy or look at the expression of insulin receptors on individual cells, you just look for high levels of blood glucose and a few other signs and say "yup, that's diabeetus".

What measurable thing does psychiatry look for nad what proof of those levels do you have?

[Anonymous No.5679079]

>>5679073
>abnormal behavior


Define that and then define normal behavior.

[Anonymous No.5679085]

>>5679073
>Medical diagnoses are all based on looking for telltale sets of symptoms.
Except psychiatry looks for symptoms that are entirely subjective in nature, a runny nose is runny and a sore throat is sore, but if someone gets depressed he suddenly has a whole disorder, for all you know the guy could have a brain tumor.

[Anonymous No.5679087]

>>5679079
That's like saying "define normal physiology". You can do it, but unless you want to write a series of textbooks the person asking the question had better be more specific.

>>5679077
Psychiatry can't look measurable levels of anything because what happens in the brain stays in the brain. Unless you want to go and get a brain biopsy from someone just to tell them that they're depressed, you're going to have to rely on behavior to make a diagnosis.

Neuroscience already knows what some physiological signs of various psychiatric diseases are. Problem is, you have to be looking at stained brain tissue under a microscope to see them. Neurotransmitters usually don't leak out from the blood-brain barrier, and even there's no guarantee that it's the level of neurotransmitter that's the problem as much as it could be a thousand different other things.

[Anonymous No.5679092]

>>5679085
>if someone gets depressed he suddenly has a whole disorder
That's like saying "if someone gets the flu suddenly he has the whole flu".

>for all you know the guy could have a brain tumor
Brain tumors tend to show up with a plethora of symptoms, usually so severe that the associated psychiatric symptoms are just a footnote.

[Anonymous No.5679094]

>>5679087
>That's like saying "define normal physiology". You can do it
Was with you up until this, because yes you can.

[Anonymous No.5679095]

>>5679087
So you admit you fuckers have no idea, all you look at is behavior and then make assumptions?

OK! Confirmed for pseudoscience.

[Anonymous No.5679099]

>>5679095
i know man, fucking science, how does it work??

[Anonymous No.5679101]

>>5679092
>That's like saying "if someone gets the flu suddenly he has the whole flu".
No, it's like saying someone has a aids and putting them on aids medication because they have a hard time getting over a flu.

[Anonymous No.5679103]

I think it's a pseudoscience. Kinda been looking at it recently, just out of curiosity. I mean, you can only find the neurotransmitter levels through tissue samples, from what I see. These psychiatrists seem to be bullshitting pretty bad.

[Anonymous No.5679102]

>>5679099
Not like psychiatry, that's for sure.

[Anonymous No.5679109]

>>5679087
You're admitting you are incapable of testing for the disorders you are so vehemently defending while at the same time prescribing medication for and defining entire disorders.

You are doing a very bad job at affirming that psychiatry isn't a pseudoscience.

[Anonymous No.5679128]

Legitimate science that tends to attract dangerous quacks, and people short on logic.
I think "rigor" is listed as a disease in the DSM IV

[Anonymous No.5679150]

>>5678789
>What do you think of psychiatry
quite controversal as strict science, essential as therapy, works moderately good, it would be a lot worse for people without it

>Legitimate medical science

>What do you think of all the groups out there against psychiatry, run of the mill conspiracy theorists
complete idiots, fraudsters for money of uninformed people or schizotypal/schizophrenic tin foil hat wearers

Very, very bad question for /sci/, OP.
Semi-autists, deep schizoids, some mathnerds and other emotionally amputated paper-and-pencil guys are already on their way with a bucket of... dirt, as they just can't understand how something can work without unambiguous calculations and here without calculations at all.

>Though maybe this hate is just an american thing. Amphetamine for kids and fluoxetine for every upset person is indeed not normal.

[Anonymous No.5679170]

>>5679150
but psychiatry has a lot of calculations, its not the calculations people are complaining about, but the models behind the calculations

[Anonymous No.5679190]

>>5679150
>fraudsters for money of uninformed people

psychiatry kind of has a more money to gain dude....you know those drugs aren't cheap.

[Anonymous No.5679193]

>>5679190
>those drugs aren't cheap.
Thats not what Canada told me.

[Anonymous No.5679222]

>>5678789
>psychiatry
>science
HAHAHAHA. get the fuck out.

[Anonymous No.5679266]

>>5679222
Why?

[Anonymous No.5679296]

>>5679266
Because Psychiatry isn't an empirical science.
All it is is observation of behaviour, and trying to guess which drug can change that behaviour in large scale.

Individually, psychology is bogus.

[Anonymous No.5679315]

>>5679296
scientologist detected

[Anonymous No.5679329]

Well psychiatrists are MDs so they at least have to learn science. What they do after that is a moral decision.
Look, as far as legitimately insane people (schizos, etc) you really want psychiatrists around. I volunteered at a facility for people who were court ordered to take drugs and attend therapy. Basically, they were crazy and committed violent crimes. You want those people medicated, regardless of how well the drugs actually work for their illness. They're too dangerous for normal society.
In the case of most people with mental disorders like depression or anxiety or whatever the drugs might not be the best idea. People with those disorders are looking for help and this is unfortunately how they are dealt with for the time being. Some psychiatrists are not doing their job with the best intentions in mind. However, that is not uncommon in the field of medicine. Some people become doctors for the money, some do it for the right reasons.
The anti-psychiatry movement is made up of people who have never worked with mentally unstable and want to hear another person's opinions.

[Anonymous No.5679345]

Legitimate, but not in it's current state.

It applies for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to function in the world i.e. the severely depressed and etc..

Meds are hella overprescribed and are used as a first resort when they should be a last resort.

[Anonymous No.5679354]

Psychiatry relies heavily on statistics, yet it is a very individual health problem. Also, statistics and study designs are often poorly combined in medical research. This makes it inherently flawed imho, but no one can deny it is important for some people.

I do think anti-depressants are over-prescribed. They are given out like toothbrushes at the dentist, and will have a positive effect on most patients whether they needed them or not.

[Crane No.5679357]

>>5678959


Psychology is not about mental disorders.

[Anonymous No.5679434]

>>5679357

That would be Abby Normal Psychology.

[Anonymous No.5679438]

>>5679296
>Psychiatry
>psychology
which is it bro?

[Anonymous No.5679531]

>those drugs aren't cheap.
>Meds are hella overprescribed
How can people make money on ill people? 90% of psychiatric drugs are easy to manufacture from cheap reagents.
In Mother Russia 20x20mg fluoxetine pack costs 2,5$, trifluoperazine 50x5mg pack 1,5$. A loaf of bread costs 0,7$.

[Anonymous No.5679593]

>>5679531

Cheap to manufacture; but they sell for much more. Russian generics is only a small part of the picture.

[Anonymous No.5679621]

>Be a depressed mess
>Brain is full of fog and I feel like I'm in a movie
>See a shrink
>Gives me pills
>1 year later I'm cured
It works, it's science. Deal with it.

[Anonymous No.5679665]

>>5678935
This. Face it /sci/ you have no clue what psychiatry and psychology as science entail. You don't have a clue on what the subject matter is, what paradigms they use, how data is analyzed. I'd be surprised if any of you have actually read some decent psychiatric or psychological journals.

[Anonymous No.5679666]

>>5679531
because it costs millions to invent the cure that is typically cheap as hell to produce

[Anonymous No.5679689]

>>5678789
I think its a legit practice, carried out wrongly in many cases. it sounds cliche, but it does sometimes create more problems than it helps. i had been on ADHD meds almost my whole life, and now that im off them i feel shittier than before. i think a lot of the reason many things are overdiagnosed is to get more people to pay loads of money for overpriced meds. same with dentistry and physical medicine. their trying to make money, so they want you to come back. I dont trust em