> Psychiatry is so close to a breakthrough. The "medication management" paradigm of that the mental health industry has used for the past 50+ years are the chains that hold them back.
And what is the paradigm to replace it? The old psychoanalytic stuff? CBT?
Most supposed "mental disorders" have metabolic problems as a component. "Stress" (various types) is important too. This aspect of "mental disorders" was starting to be explored 40 years ago, according to one of the books I bought recently, but psychiatrists of that era were more interested in magic bullet prescriptions to take care of their patients' problems.
The biology is very complicated and there are all kinds of feedback mechanisms at play, this is true. What is hard to see for me is what is cause and what is effect, and what that means for treatment.
Let's say you have a patient who is moderately depressed, overweight, w/insulin resistance (metabolic syndrome)... I imagine a very common presentation.
All of these things cause each other. The patient might have started overeating because they lost their wife a few years ago, and never really adjusted - but what can you do for them now?
They might have also gotten depressed because of hormonal imbalances that caused them to be less active and gain weight, but now there's a huge pile of problems to untangle, including NEW hormonal imbalances.
It's true that throwing a Prozac and Ambien Rx at them doesn't solve very much. You can't medicate away overeating and bariatric surgery isn't really that much better.
It would also be GREAT if we could get everybody to exercise, since it treats damn near everything including depression and insomnia pretty well. But doctors have been telling their patients to exercise along with the mass media and everybody in the world for a long time, and it just doesn't work. Might as well tell someone who is depressed to cheer up.
It really is a privileged position to be able to take a sabbatical, focus on your health, have a team of doctors and therapists work with you to handle the issues, mental and physical, that have arisen.
It's no wonder there's been a search for a magic bullet prescription; that's the kind of thing there could be broad access to.
Not exactly - the "symptoms" you mention feed into a destructive feedback loop, but there are always causes behind the patient's presentation.
The effigy of Ancel Keys should be ritually burned by every graduating class of medical students, so they are reminded of all the harm their predecessors have done through their gullibility.
And what is the paradigm to replace it? The old psychoanalytic stuff? CBT?