The Ongoing Failure of Pyschiatry

[The Atheist]

When I was a kid I watched The Snake Pit, featuring Olivia de Havilland as a raving loony who gets locked in a padded cell during the 1920s.

We've come such a long way since then.

A case has come to light of an autistic man who has not been convicted of crimes, but who has been held in a small cell in solitary confinement for 5 years because psychiatric medicine can't calm the bloke down enough to handle.

This is rightly causing national outrage, especially since an unknown number of other people are held in similar circumstances, and that over 7000 people were held in solitary confinement due to mental illness in NZ last year.

To me, this is an indictment on an industry that has failed to make progress in the past century. They're still using ECT, they're still locking people up in solitary whose only crime is to be sick, and they're still prescribing drugs that are worse than the "cure".

Physician, heal thyself!

 

[Reality Check]

A case has come to light of an autistic man who has not been convicted of crimes, but who has been held in a small cell in solitary confinement for 5 years because psychiatric medicine can't calm the bloke down enough to handle....

You cannot demand that an area of medicine magically cure people, The Atheist !

Strictly speaking the patient, Ashley, has been not in solitary confinement for 5 years. That would mean no leaving his room or contact with people for 5 years!
Ashley has been in seclusion for 5 years. That means a mental health unit which he can only leave for 90 minutes a day. He does spend more than half the time locked in his room which is totally inadequate for that purpose.
That is a failure of the health system, not psychiatry.
The reviewers in his last review pinpointed a lack of staff.

They described how Ashley was commonly denied requests due to a lack of staff, such as watching a DVD, having a cup of tea or going for a walk. Instead he takes frequent baths, or cleans his room, spending hours wiping the walls.
Long periods of time go by marked down as, simply, "unengaged".

Personally I agree that Ashley's situation falls under the UN definition of torture since it has had adverse effects on his mental and physical health.

Locked in isolation: Lack of clarity around patient seclusion

Over the past five years, inspectors have noted about five long-term seclusion cases in mental health facilities. But they say a "substantial number" of areas are not monitored, including community-based homes for the disabled, aged-care units and other compulsory care facilities.
...
Director of Mental Health Dr John Crawshaw said there was individual funding available for such cases. He said seclusion rates had dropped by 32 per cent, with 7091 people spending time in seclusion last year.

Ashley is one of the few reported cases of long term seclusion . The article suggests 5 or 6 reported cases in the last 5 years with the caveat that some faculties are not monitored so cases may be unreported.

Psychiatry still uses electroconvulsive therapy because it works (generally used as a last resort) despite its reputation and past history. An analogy: Doctors do not refuse to use morphine because its association with addicts or any past misuse !
Psychiatrists lock people up in seclusion because they cannot cure them and the legal system demands that potentially violent people be locked up safely.
Overuse of benzodiazepines: still an issue? is about the overuse by all doctors. The consultant for the article is Dr Jeremy McMinn, Consultant Psychiatrist and Addiction Specialist, Wellington. One of the references about adverse effects was published in J. Psychiatry (the other J. Psychiatry reference was about withdrawing patients from long-term use).

 

[The Atheist]

You cannot demand that an area of medicine magically cure people, The Atheist !

I'm not, but I am demanding some improvement in the "medicine".

Psychiatry is still using the equivalent of cupping.

Strictly speaking the patient, Ashley, has been not in solitary confinement for 5 years. That would mean no leaving his room or contact with people for 5 years!
Ashley has been in seclusion for 5 years. That means a mental health unit which he can only leave for 90 minutes a day.

Potato, potahto.

90 minutes a day and you're disputing solitary confinement? Each to their own, I guess, but you're also avoiding an unknown number of days where he did not get his 90 minutes, as noted in the original article.

I'm amused by the fact that actual criminals have been financially compensated for spending as little as two weeks in solitary, while Ashley just gets locked away in a shed.

He does spend more than half the time locked in his room which is totally inadequate for that purpose.
That is a failure of the health system, not psychiatry.

Completely incorrect.

The health system is charged with handling the meat; the psychiatric industry is charged with developing treatments, and there are none.

If you're going to blame those who get left the dregs of the psychiatric industry to look after, you may as well blame Ashley or his parents.

Personally I agree that Ashley's situation falls under the UN definition of torture since it has had adverse effects on his mental and physical health.

Then we're on the same wavelength.

Ashley is one of the few reported cases of long term seclusion . The article suggests 5 or 6 reported cases in the last 5 years with the caveat that some faculties are not monitored so cases may be unreported.

Precisely.

It is known that some Alzheimer's patients are restrained, but christ knows how many.

One is too many.

Psychiatry still uses electroconvulsive therapy because it works (generally used as a last resort) despite its reputation and past history. An analogy: Doctors do not refuse to use morphine because its association with addicts or any past misuse !

I have a much better analogy - you can still make fire by rubbing two sticks, but that technology has advanced a little.

Yes, it works for short-term help in acute cases - in other words, it delays the inevitable onset of the next episode.

It isn't a cure; it's a stop-gap for an industry incapable of real progress.

Psychiatrists lock people up in seclusion because they cannot cure them and the legal system demands that potentially violent people be locked up safely.

That is the problem as I've noted. We found a cure for AIDS in the space of a couple of decades; we can now keep people alive beyond the wildest dreams of the 1980s - Doug Myers, for example - and we produced a vaccine to the novel H1N1 virus in the space of a few months.

That psychiatry cannot even mitigate the effects of the illness is an indictment on their lack of progress.

 

[wollery]

AIDS was an international crisis, and massive amounts of money were poured into drug research.

H1N1 was an international time bomb, and massive amounts of money were poured into development of the already existing flu drugs.

By contrast there's very little money in psychiatric drug research, largely because not enough people give a crap. It's not like psychiatric illness is contagious or anything, you can't catch madness from an infected person! There's no imminent crisis, no need for international cooperation, and the vast majority of seriously ill mental patients are pretty much invisible. Hence no research money.

So here's a suggestion, instead of spouting off to an Internet forum where nobody has any power or ability to make any difference, why don't you petition your parliament and help to get the psychiatrists the funding to run proper drug trials, and develop effective treatment?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[blutoski]

I'm not, but I am demanding some improvement in the "medicine".

Psychiatry is still using the equivalent of cupping.

Hyperbole.

Potato, potahto.

90 minutes a day and you're disputing solitary confinement? Each to their own, I guess, but you're also avoiding an unknown number of days where he did not get his 90 minutes, as noted in the original article.

Reality Check was not quibbling... I think you misunderstand the definitions. The 90 minutes is not time outside a locked room, but time outside the unit entirely. Going to a cafe, for example. I expect he doesn't always get a pass every day, no. Being in a unit and being able to interact with other patients is not 'solitary'. However, there are periods where he is in full seclusion and unable to interact with the other patients for several hours a day.

I'm amused by the fact that actual criminals have been financially compensated for spending as little as two weeks in solitary, while Ashley just gets locked away in a shed.

Crap analogy, and further hyperbole regarding 'shed'. The key difference being whether it's justified. Prisoners were compensated because their solitary was not justified. Heck: there are convicts who receive compensation for being in prison at all (eg: false convictions). Their compensation doesn't prove that imprisonment is wrong.

Completely incorrect.

The health system is charged with handling the meat; the psychiatric industry is charged with developing treatments, and there are none.

Sort of... the profession is also charged with publishing guidelines for care. Since this institution violated the professional guidelines for care, I agree that blame for this example should be placed on the institution, not the profession.

If you're going to blame those who get left the dregs of the psychiatric industry to look after, you may as well blame Ashley or his parents.

It depends on what they knew.

Then we're on the same wavelength.



Precisely.

It is known that some Alzheimer's patients are restrained, but christ knows how many.

One is too many.

I disagree, sometimes you gotta restrain. The alternative is sedation, and that's a higher risk of unintended/undesireable side effects. The important question is whether the incidents in question are aligned with professional guidelines or not. If yes, then we can direct criticism to the profession, but if not, then the facility is accountable, or perhaps specific individuals if they were acting contrary to the facility's directive.

I have a much better analogy - you can still make fire by rubbing two sticks, but that technology has advanced a little.

Yes, it works for short-term help in acute cases - in other words, it delays the inevitable onset of the next episode.

It isn't a cure; it's a stop-gap for an industry incapable of real progress.

Industry? Do you mean pharmaceuticals? I'm confused, because in the OP I thought you were talking about psychiatry, which is a medical specialty.

Psychiatry has made a lot of progress in the approximately 50 years since the introduction of the first pharmaceuticals. It's one of the newest specialties within medicine, and arguably the most complex subject matter. Vaccines, by comparison, are the medical low hanging fruit.

Having done HIV research (MSc) and psychology research (BA), I can say that HIV research is an order of magnitude less difficult - the subject matter isn't trying to trick you, for one thing. (caveat - I worked in study design, so yeah, sometimes trials volunteers are trying to trick us, but HIV itself isn't)

That is the problem as I've noted. We found a cure for AIDS in the space of a couple of decades; we can now keep people alive beyond the wildest dreams of the 1980s - Doug Myers, for example - and we produced a vaccine to the novel H1N1 virus in the space of a few months.

Meh. And we've been kicking the tires on cancer and cardiovascular disease with little progress for ten generations.

I think progress against a particular category of illness can also mean it's a bugger to cure, not necessarily a lack of competence or interest.

That psychiatry cannot even mitigate the effects of the illness is an indictment on their lack of progress.

Psychiatry can, and does. This is an edge case. Millions of kids on the lower functioning end of spectrum disorder are living astronomically better lives than they would have 50 years ago when we threw them into prisons or stacked them into mental institutions like cordwood. My best friend's kid is medium functioning autistic, and his life is much better than his grand-uncle's (my friend's dad's brother) who had about the same impact, but had the misfortune of being born in the 1930s.


Scientology has a pretty well funded 'rage machine' that cranks out these edge cases in the guise of journalism, and tries to paint the entire psychiatric landscape with them, because that's their idee fixe these days.

There's another example they've been championing here in Canada. It's a guy who cut up his wife's face and his lawyers successfully obtained a defense of mentally ill and unable to understand his actions. So, he's been in an institution in Ontario for almost ten years... if he had been found criminally responsible for his actions, he'd be out of prison by now.

 

[Joey McGee]

Crank nonsense of the most ignorant and arrogant kind. Another genius that knows better than the scientific community. Little regard for objective argument or research, due diligence has not been done on claims.

 

[Dancing David]

Autism is NEUROLOGICAL disorder with multiple manifestations and functional differences.
It can NOT be treated by psychiatry. Some manifestations can be reduced in a pallative fashion.

Autism is not a mental illness

 

[The Atheist]

AIDS was an international crisis, and massive amounts of money were poured into drug research.

H1N1 was an international time bomb, and massive amounts of money were poured into development of the already existing flu drugs.

Lemme see...

HIV has killed an estimated 650,000 Americans.

The first HIV death in USA was around 1980.

Since 1980, at least 1,500,000 Americans have died as a result of mental illness.

The number of HIV deaths is decreasing very quickly; the number of deaths from mental illness is not.

1.2M Americans live with HIV; almost 10,000,000 Americans live with serious mental illness.

Do you really want to argue maths on this?

By contrast there's very little money in psychiatric drug research, largely because not enough people give a crap. It's not like psychiatric illness is contagious or anything, you can't catch madness from an infected person! There's no imminent crisis, no need for international cooperation, and the vast majority of seriously ill mental patients are pretty much invisible. Hence no research money.

That's one of the silliest comments I've ever seen.

The number one prescription in USA is for an anti-psychotic tablet, and many psychiatric drugs make up the top 100 prescribed.

The industry is immense, and since people are much likely to be on psychiatric drugs for much longer than antibiotics or cancer treatment, the idea that the industry lacks money is laughable.

The nobody cares part is correct.

So here's a suggestion, instead of spouting off to an Internet forum where nobody has any power or ability to make any difference, why don't you petition your parliament and help to get the psychiatrists the funding to run proper drug trials, and develop effective treatment?

What an inane comment.

Anyone reading that out of context would need to be unaware of what discussion forums actually are.

Hyperbole.

Good spot.

Reality Check was not quibbling... I think you misunderstand the definitions. The 90 minutes is not time outside a locked room, but time outside the unit entirely. Going to a cafe, for example. I expect he doesn't always get a pass every day, no. Being in a unit and being able to interact with other patients is not 'solitary'. However, there are periods where he is in full seclusion and unable to interact with the other patients for several hours a day.

More absurdity married to ignorance. Did you read the whole articles?

He does not get to go to cafes and almost all of his times out of his shed are on his own, barring his two guards. He almost never interacts with other humans and has spent over half of his five years in a single cell.

That's close enough to solitary for me. I'm surprised you didn't spot the slight analogy after having been so brilliant at spotting hyperbole.

Crap analogy, and further hyperbole regarding 'shed'.

The shed is no hyperbole. My shed is far nicer than his cell.

The key difference being whether it's justified.

I'm not arguing the justification - there's no doubt he's a danger to everyone. A big, strong raving loony who could rip your head off in a heartbeat, and who might do at the least provocation.

I think the health board could do a bit more in terms of comfort and life, but the issue is with the shrinks who can't even begin to control the disability.

Industry? Do you mean pharmaceuticals? I'm confused, because in the OP I thought you were talking about psychiatry, which is a medical specialty.

Psychiatry is an industry, and psychiatric drugs are a part of the industry.

Psychiatry has made a lot of progress in the approximately 50 years since the introduction of the first pharmaceuticals.

Wow, I hope you had your fingers crossed when you typed that.

They're still prescribing the exact same drugs all this time later. In time frames, penicillin only pre-dates psychiatric drugs by a decade or so, so the time argument falls flat on its face there. Antibiotics have almost come full circle while doctors are still prescribing Valium.

Anti-psychotic drugs have extremely high incidence rates of adverse side effects (up to 50%); as shown recently, are so much more likely to lead to suicidal thoughts that drug companies lied about their research, and also carry increased risk of cardiac arrest and sudden death.

Meh. And we've been kicking the tires on cancer and cardiovascular disease with little progress for ten generations.

Ten generations being around 250 years, yet you accuse me of hyperbole?

In 250 years, life expectancy has almost doubled.

The progress made in cancer & cardiac treatment is immense. You don't even need me to point that out, but if you wish, I'm quite happy to back up the case with plenty of examples.

Psychiatry can, and does. This is an edge case. Millions of kids on the lower functioning end of spectrum disorder are living astronomically better lives than they would have 50 years ago when we threw them into prisons or stacked them into mental institutions like cordwood. My best friend's kid is medium functioning autistic, and his life is much better than his grand-uncle's (my friend's dad's brother) who had about the same impact, but had the misfortune of being born in the 1930s.

And is that more down to societal change or psychiatry's?

I'm picking the former, since we [generally] don't insist loonies be locked up and kids with autism have a much greater emphasis on normalisation, achieved by attending normal schools and getting lots of help that did not previously exist.

 

[The Atheist]

Autism is NEUROLOGICAL disorder with multiple manifestations and functional differences.
It can NOT be treated by psychiatry. Some manifestations can be reduced in a pallative fashion.

Autism is not a mental illness

Yes, mea maxima culpa.

However, treatment of it still rests within the psychiatric industry, so it's another difference that makes no difference.

Saying " It can NOT be treated by psychiatry" is patently incorrect. What branch of medicine do you think it should attach to? Obstetrics? Gynaecology? Proctology?

 

[Joey McGee]

"psychiatric industry"

Crank language, weasel words. Psychiatry is a medical science, the application of which requires money. When the regulations are as thick as the earth's crust, calling it an industry is just hilarious. Watch, I'm gonna google "Psychiatric industry" and the top 3 sites will be crank sites.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

I am right about my prediction. Your thread sucks really bad.

 

[Pup]

Any company that could create a low-side-effect drug that, taken daily, effectively treated depression, with little potential for abuse, would be worth billions. Occam's razor suggests that companies are desperately trying but haven't been able to succeed, rather than that this (and similar needs) need pointed out to them as something important to work on.

 

[Steve]

Yes, mea maxima culpa.

However, treatment of it still rests within the psychiatric industry, so it's another difference that makes no difference.

Saying " It can NOT be treated by psychiatry" is patently incorrect. What branch of medicine do you think it should attach to? Obstetrics? Gynaecology? Proctology?

Psychiatry may be able to alleviate some of the effects of autism in some people and is apparently doing so. Some extreme cases do not react to this treatement. This would be a treatment but not a cure.

As to your comments on medical specialties involving the pelvic area (freudian?), perhaps neurology is the word you were searching for? Neurological research is probably the specialty most likely to reach an understanding of, and more effective treatment for autism.

 

[Reality Check]

I'm not, but I am demanding some improvement in the "medicine".

No you are not, The Atheist - you are demanding a specific improvement in the medicine - the ability to completely control patients who have psychotic episodes.
Insulting an area of medicine do not impress me nor I suspect other posters.

Some dictionary English for you, The Atheist: Solitary confinement

Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an inmate is isolated from any human contact, often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner and has been cited as an additional measure of protection for the inmate. It is also given for violations of prison regulations or as a form of protective custody and, in the case of possible suicide, to prevent access to items that could disrupt the prisoner's health.

Long term seclusion used in mental institutions is not strictly solitary confinement because the patients have limited human contact including in this case time outside of the facility: 90 minutes a day currently with a past period when it was 30 minutes a day.

It is irrelevant that some NZ criminals in 2005 were compensated for actual and illegal solitary confinement

Denying what you cited is bad, The Atheist: Autistic man locked in isolation for five years

The three expert reviewers decided much of Ashley's impulsive and unpredictable aggression was due to the mismatch between the care he needs, and the service he was getting at Tawhirimatea.

They described how Ashley was commonly denied requests due to a lack of staff, such as watching a DVD, having a cup of tea or going for a walk. Instead he takes frequent baths, or cleans his room, spending hours wiping the walls.

Long periods of time go by marked down as, simply, "unengaged".

You still need to learn about electroconvulsive therapy

A round of ECT is effective for about 50% of people with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, whether it is unipolar or bipolar.[6] Follow-up treatment is still poorly studied, but about half of people who respond relapse within 12 months.[7]

(leaving 25% of treated people still cured after 12 months for an unknown time)

Pipedreams about what psychiatry should be able to do, does not reflect the real world.
There is no cure for AIDS

There is no cure or vaccine; however, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy.[9][12] Treatment is recommended as soon as the diagnosis is made.[13] Without treatment, the average survival time after infection is 11 years.[14]

The disease that Ashely suffers from is called autism. Psychiatry can mitigate its effects, e.g. tranquilizers exist !

 

[The Greater Fool]

I am heartily pleased that people with the OP views have little to no influence over the care I or my loved ones receive. Certainly, I have the 'Psychiatry Industry' to thank for the continued health and well being of a couple of family members and for assisting me in understanding their needs.

I've learned that trying to reason with people having the OP view is like trying to reason with a delusional person (and I have tried to reason with a delusional person).

 

[blutoski]

More absurdity married to ignorance. Did you read the whole articles?

Yes, and I also worked in a hospital for over a decade and my wife is a psychiatrist.
I actually understand the subject matter. I'm hoping to educate you about the definitions, you seem either to not understand them, or to not care. eg: solitary vs seclusion, for example.

He does not get to go to cafes and almost all of his times out of his shed are on his own, barring his two guards. He almost never interacts with other humans and has spent over half of his five years in a single cell.

That's close enough to solitary for me. I'm surprised you didn't spot the slight analogy after having been so brilliant at spotting hyperbole.

I don't think the article gives us enough detail to say what the actual conditions are, but I think my main point is that it sounds like it's contrary to psychiatric recommendations, so therefore not a good criticism of psychiatry, without exploring that comparison.

Personally, I think he has a case against the facility, based on the information available. A failure of capitalism, IMO.

The shed is no hyperbole. My shed is far nicer than his cell.

He has a cell? Not a room? (ergo: the hyperbole accusation)

I'm not arguing the justification - there's no doubt he's a danger to everyone. A big, strong raving loony who could rip your head off in a heartbeat, and who might do at the least provocation.

I think the health board could do a bit more in terms of comfort and life, but the issue is with the shrinks who can't even begin to control the disability.

OK, so I'm getting the picture that you think the lack of solution is "somebody's fault" - ?

That's why I'm curious about your opinion about medicine in general, which has failed to make much more than a dent in cancer rates.

This has come up on the list before... cancer is a family of conditions (similar to mental illness), some of which are easier to treat than others and have seen incredible progress (similar to mental illness), while others are stubbornly resistant to any treatment to the point of despair and global statistics for incidence are getting even worse (similar to mental illness).

Psychiatry is an industry, and psychiatric drugs are a part of the industry.

OK, sure... but then I guess medicine is an industry, do you think they're all quacks because no cure for cancer?

Wow, I hope you had your fingers crossed when you typed that.

They're still prescribing the exact same drugs all this time later. In time frames, penicillin only pre-dates psychiatric drugs by a decade or so, so the time argument falls flat on its face there. Antibiotics have almost come full circle while doctors are still prescribing Valium.

Not sure what you mean by that. Valium is still prescribed, because it still works. There are better drugs now as well, for patients who need those.

My wife is prescribing what are called 3rd generation antipsychotics that are less than a decade old, they're now the first line in BC.

Anti-psychotic drugs have extremely high incidence rates of adverse side effects (up to 50%); as shown recently, are so much more likely to lead to suicidal thoughts that drug companies lied about their research, and also carry increased risk of cardiac arrest and sudden death.

Absolutely. So do chemotherapy drugs, surgery, and radiation therapy.
Is this evidence of an 'ongoing failure' in cancer treatment?

Ten generations being around 250 years, yet you accuse me of hyperbole?

In 250 years, life expectancy has almost doubled.

The progress made in cancer & cardiac treatment is immense. You don't even need me to point that out, but if you wish, I'm quite happy to back up the case with plenty of examples.

Hm, no I'm not sure what you would be presenting. Cancer is all cured now? I don't think I understand your thesis. My impression is that you think progress in psychiatry doesn't exist, whereas obviously it does. There has been progress in all fields of medicine, psychiatry included. I would say that psychiatry has had very rapid progress, and that is due to its very recent emergence as a field of study.

And is that more down to societal change or psychiatry's?

Well... both obviously. Psychiatry discovers new things and society responds to the facts. Same with any medical field. Is reduced typhoid incidence due to medicine or society? Both, right? Medicine identified the root cause of these epidemics, and society adapted to the information.

I'm picking the former, since we [generally] don't insist loonies be locked up and kids with autism have a much greater emphasis on normalisation, achieved by attending normal schools and getting lots of help that did not previously exist.

The main reason we've been able to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill is that we have better management options. Psychiatry has a combination of better talk therapy and more effective and tolerable medications, for when talk therapy is not effective enough to achieve the therapeutic goals.

 

[Reality Check]

Autism is NEUROLOGICAL disorder with multiple manifestations and functional differences.

Correct, Dancing David.
However autism has historically been a psychiatric disorder (Leo Kanner who named it was a psychiatrist). The treatment is considered as part of psychiatry when it really should be a branch of neurology (autism spectrum sometimes appears as a neurological disorder).

 

[Dancing David]

Psychiatry may be able to alleviate some of the effects of autism in some people and is apparently doing so. Some extreme cases do not react to this treatement. This would be a treatment but not a cure.

As to your comments on medical specialties involving the pelvic area (freudian?), perhaps neurology is the word you were searching for? Neurological research is probably the specialty most likely to reach an understanding of, and more effective treatment for autism.

The Atheist misses the boat again,

The most effective treatment fro autism is early identification and intervention not psychiatry

 

[Dancing David]

Correct, Dancing David.
However autism has historically been a psychiatric disorder (Leo Kanner who named it was a psychiatrist). The treatment is considered as part of psychiatry when it really should be a branch of neurology (autism spectrum sometimes appears as a neurological disorder).

I think any one in the MH and development field and especially people who live with and intervene with autism will tell you it is not a mental illness.

It is developmental and neurological.


.

 

[blutoski]

I am heartily pleased that people with the OP views have little to no influence over the care I or my loved ones receive. Certainly, I have the 'Psychiatry Industry' to thank for the continued health and well being of a couple of family members and for assisting me in understanding their needs.

I've learned that trying to reason with people having the OP view is like trying to reason with a delusional person (and I have tried to reason with a delusional person).

"Psychiatry Failure" is a subset of Psychiatry Denial, which is more than fringe these days, unfortunately.

RationalWiki has an entry: [Mental Illness Denial], and Dr. Novella has chimed in: [Mental Illness Denial]

I have some expectation that the future of Psychiatry Denial is one of declining popularity, as I suspect the prime driver is Scientology dollars, and they're on their last ropes these days.

When I was at APA last month, Scientology had their usual protest. They brought back their 'house of horrors' popup experience. It's like a carney haunted house, they guide groups through the temporary structure, with dioramas of trepanation, electrocutions, people tied to beds with rope, &c.

 

[The Atheist]

Any company that could create a low-side-effect drug that, taken daily, effectively treated depression, with little potential for abuse, would be worth billions. Occam's razor suggests that companies are desperately trying but haven't been able to succeed, rather than that this (and similar needs) need pointed out to them as something important to work on.

Then point me to some examples of the research, because I'm not seeing it.

All I see is continuing push of drugs that already fail.

Yes, and I also worked in a hospital for over a decade and my wife is a psychiatrist.
I actually understand the subject matter. I'm hoping to educate you about the definitions, you seem either to not understand them, or to not care. eg: solitary vs seclusion, for example.

In the case of seclusion v solitary, I've already said that the difference is minor enough to be irrelevant - in cases like Ashley.

I don't think the article gives us enough detail to say what the actual conditions are, but I think my main point is that it sounds like it's contrary to psychiatric recommendations, so therefore not a good criticism of psychiatry, without exploring that comparison.

Well, since his condition and living conditions are the responsibility of the psychiatric wing of the health board, I'm struggling to see whose problem it is if not psychiatry.

That's why I'm curious about your opinion about medicine in general, which has failed to make much more than a dent in cancer rates.

What utter nonsense - are you sure you're involved in the medical industry?

Let's have a look at the facts, shall we?

Every single demographic under age 44 has seen at least a 50% reduction in death rate since 1950. An 80% reduction in child cancer mortality is enormous.

"Failed to make a dent in" is absolute crap.

OK, sure... but then I guess medicine is an industry, do you think they're all quacks because no cure for cancer?

Lovely strawman - I hear they're taking bids on Ebay for them right now.

My wife is prescribing what are called 3rd generation antipsychotics that are less than a decade old, they're now the first line in BC.

Yep, and they don't even reduce the incidence of cardiac arrest and sudden death - a massive improvement!

Hm, no I'm not sure what you would be presenting. Cancer is all cured now? I don't think I understand your thesis. My impression is that you think progress in psychiatry doesn't exist, whereas obviously it does. There has been progress in all fields of medicine, psychiatry included. I would say that psychiatry has had very rapid progress, and that is due to its very recent emergence as a field of study.

We're just going to have to disagree, then. No big deal - I just don't see where the progress has been made, apart some fine-tuning that might have increased effectiveness by a percent or two.

Your lack of data in support of your position is revealing.

The main reason we've been able to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill is that we have better management options.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what I meant when I mentioned societal changes to the way they're cared for.

We agree there - it is physical. not medical improvement.

Psychiatry has a combination of better talk therapy and more effective and tolerable medications, for when talk therapy is not effective enough to achieve the therapeutic goals.

Yep, talking is distinctly new.

The Atheist misses the boat again,

The most effective treatment fro autism is early identification and intervention not psychiatry

Nope - I agree with that entirely.

In the case of Ashley, he missed that bus, and some people aren't content to let him rot.