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Originally Posted by troutman
You really are just supporting my point.
I'm not talking about individual doctors. Science, in the long run, will make corrections. It may be painfully slow to adapt sometimes, but it will progress.
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In the long run sure. What kind of long run are we talking about though?
Based on the history of psychiatry I don't see much progress. The history of psychiatry is for the most part a bumbling series of different kinds of tortures that made unruly patients more docile. Some of the drug cocktails used this century are nothing more but the same thing and you can see that from the "side effects". If the patients are manageable, who cares if you've permanently damaged them worse than the original psychosis?
In fact an argument can be made that the peak of mental health care in some respects was the French model in the 1800's.
Lobotomoy was a method devised this century and it became widely popular because it made unruly patients docile. Of course the patients also lost a lot of higher level brain functioning but who cares right?
That we are searching for more drugs whose long term effects we cannot measure accurately until years after they are approved by the FDA to replace those whose "side effects" are too detrimental to be continued to use suggests little progress has been made. That electro-shock therapy has seen a resurgence suggests regress may have been made.
Psychiatry is a science that is clearly still in the dark ages. The course I took on psychiatry last summer to finish off my undergrad scared the heck out of me. And it certainly hits home as my half-brother is alcoholic, was diagnosed with bi-polar a decade ago and has been on anti-psychotics ever since. He now lives on the streets bouncing in and out of hospitals. He had a good spell off the drugs for a time but it sure seems to me that he's gotten progressively worse over the last decade. In fact a recent doctor suggested he never had bi-polar and was merely alcoholic with an alcohol allergy. If thats the case then the lithium he's been taking for a decade has probably only made him worse. The electroshock therapy probably didn't help. He's pretty much a lost cause right now, but has 3 kids who have so far turned out alright despite him.
In the case of psychiatry, I think the bio-medical model hurts people. If someone needs self-esteem, or life coping skills, they aren't going to get them from a pill. I am not dismissing those who have been helped by psychiatry because clearly some have. But if you acknowledge those people you must also acknowledge those who have been permanently damaged or scarred for life by psychiatric "treatment."