RE: Is psychiatry a pseudoscience?

As someone in the field, I would say he has a good point and it's a understandable question. The thing is, the study of the mind as a science hasn't been around as long as saaaay chemistry, geology, physiology, etc....the sciences of psychology and psychaiatry are still in early stages of discovery, and because of the incredible complexity of the mind it's very difficult to find truly empirical studies that prove ANYTHING.

And it's true that alot of mental health professionals and psychiatrists with MD's are sometimes, well, quacks. I don't think mood/mind alterating medications are complete bullshit, but I also see how they are misused and over-prescribed by Dr's who really don't understand enough about the human brain to be tinkering the way they do. I know first hand from working in the state mental hospital. It's alot of trial and error type stuff.

Realize that it wasn't long ago in the evolution of the medical field that "physicians" were blood-letting as a way to cure sickness and disease in patients. I'd go out on a limb and say that we are in that stage now in our development of the psychiatric field.

I realize i spelled psychaiatry wrong a couple of times there.

crap i did it again. it's psychiatry.

As someone who suffers from bipolar disorder (manic depression) I have something to say...

I used to believe just as Tom Cruise does. But after a couple of decades of trying to heal myself without drugs I am finally living symptom free thanks to an antipsychotic drug. Not believing I was "bipolar", I tried many, many modalities of healing and nothing worked. I tried acupuncture, herbs, chinese medicine, energy work, mass exercise, religion, meditation, 12 step programs, spiritual teachers, and continuous therapy throughout with great therapists who taught me much. Yet during that time, I have attempted suicide three times and self mutilated countless times with serious affect. My body is weak and diseased because of it. Ironic since I used to be anti any thing that wasn't natural for concern that it would harm my body. It turned out the opposite to be true. Not only have I suffered but, so have my friends, former co-workers, family, and an ex-wife.

I believe that if I had found the correct drug twenty-one years ago at age 17, I and those close to me wouldn't have suffered so.

That said, in MY opinion psychiatric drugs are in general over prescribed just as many medications are when other therapies would be better utilized. There are many examples of that. Yet, believing that was the case with me almost killed me and definitely has shortened my life in this body.

The human brain is as someone already said a very complex thing.The way we feel & think is affected by different kinds physiological and psychological stress.

A bad experience in our childhood can affect us as much as eating a sandwich.Our brain is(of course) connected to other parts of our body, as much there are psycho-somatic disorders there are somatic-psychic ones, it's always a mixture.As the story of the previous poster showed it's better to take an anti-d before suffering and harming other people but long-term it is necessary to detect the different kinds of stress on yourself and get rid of them.

The Hormone production can be affected by so many things, you just sitting in front of a screen for several hours a day can reduce melatonin-production by more than 30% while stopping caloric-intake in the evening can increase Melatonin and Somatropin-production a lot.

The brain has a very strong connection to the guts and if we have an overload here and our body can't pocess food and other things that enter our body not as good as it should anymore it also has negative effects on the brain.

Studies have shown that 99,99999% of all people who suffer from Schizophrenia have a lot of food-allergies as well as strange cultures of gut-bacteriums.

So as you see neurological changes can be caused by simple physiological damages.

bipolar and schizophrenia are not "negative effects"

they are serious illnesses that devastate people and their loved ones

just because a higher than normal number of people who have a specific type of illness have a certain type of allergy doesn't mean the allergy is the cause - it's much more likely that the allergy is either a symptom or artifact in this case

while treating the allergy may improve the patient's health & well being, it is not likely to have a significant impact on the psychosis

dmb wrote:

while treating the allergy may improve the patient's health & well being, it is not likely to have a significant impact on the psychosis

This is not true, there have been lots of studies on this topic.There was a big study in russia where they treated schizophrenics with long-term fasting(relieve the guts) and they had a success-rate of 80% more(absolutely no sign of a psychological disorder anymore).

I suffered from Depression and Anxiety and once i reduced the histamine production - first by medication and then by cleaning the guts(dropped the antihistamines and cortisone) i had absolutely no signs on depression,insomnia and anxiety anymore.Tricky, the famous musician from Bristol for example was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic till he found out that he suffers from a yeast-allergy and some time after changing his diet all forms of paranoia and schizophrenia dissapeared(as well as his musicalgenius).

I read a lot of such stories, don't get me wrong there are a lot factors that can cause neurological changes but there are always reasons, if you really have that bad genetics you are already born mentally handicaped but people develop such disorders over years till they finally have to find professional help.

correlation is not always causation

(this is the type of logic that helped me score 122 on the LSAT!)

true but there is enough scientific proof that there is a strong connection between the gut and the brain, it's even called the "2nd brain".

TD, glad to hear that you are doing well after all your struggles. I am sorry about hearing about your situation. I know someone going through similar things at this moment and I will have them read this.

Keep fighting the good fight and hope that your life continues to be prosperous.

TD in OR wrote:

in MY opinion psychiatric drugs are in general over prescribed just as many medications are when other therapies would be better utilized. There are many examples of that.

Actually, most epidemiological studies done regarding psychiatric disorders demonstrates that doctors are under-prescribing. What do you base your ascertion on?