Is Therapy a Crock?


Robert Baratheon

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2) The Pharmaceutical (aka Drug War) lobby are in bed with the socialized medical system and there is an incentive to throw drugs at people rather than to investigate behavioural and philosophical issues.

Our behavior is a manifestation of electrochemical processes that take place within our bodies. Are you going to have a philosophical discourse with a cloud of potassium ions working their way through a semi-permeable membrane?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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2) The Pharmaceutical (aka Drug War) lobby are in bed with the socialized medical system and there is an incentive to throw drugs at people rather than to investigate behavioural and philosophical issues.

Our behavior is a manifestation of electrochemical processes that take place within our bodies. Are you going to have a philosophical discourse with a cloud of potassium ions working their way through a semi-permeable membrane?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Whatever turns you on.

--Brant

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1) Please elaborate on how you've reached this conclusion. (I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but would very much like to hear your thought process as I've been enjoying your other posts.)

For similar philosophical and empirical reasons such as Thomas Szasz: The concept of a 'sick mind' is a confusion of types, it's like assigning 'youthfulness' to the color red. It might be fine as a metaphor, but literally speaking it's nonsensical. 'Mental health' is, in fact, moralizing aimed at the behavior and personality traits which make people uncomfortable. If you look into the DSM or places like psychology today you will see clear evidence of moralizing and paternalism, with a distinctly Humanist-altruist slant to it (all sorts of 'disorders' are found for people who don't like to conform well enough, much like in the Soviet Union). The DSM is a Cold-Reader's manual, with no objective criterion and a lot of value judgments disguised as analytical formulations. The psychopharma industry's 'anti-depressents', etc. are simply assumed to 'work' despite the lack of any understanding of a causal mechanism and the fact that over the long term most of their 'results' decline to statistical error.

2) This is not a mental health issue - it's a general health issue. If this supports the theory that therapy is a crock, then it follows that it would support the theory that all forms of medical care is a crock. Including those I would assume you don't consider to be pseudoscience.
4) Again, this is not specific to mental health. The entire healthcare industry is heavily financed and regulated by the State. So again, I would say that if this point supports the theory that therapy is a crock, then it must also support the theory that all healthcare is a crock.

It does support that theory, in as much as medical care bought and sought is undoubtedly the result of the bizarre incentive and market structure created by the State over the past two hundred years in its various attempts to regulate and subordinate the medical industry. Of course that isn't to say there aren't real medical procedures, only that Psycho-Pharma in addition to being pseudoscientific in its own right is further distorted away from its beneficial elements (i.e., it may help to talk to people, or obtain certain chemical treatments for the purposes of emotional management) toward a drugging-based approach where the doctor mostly does paperwork. There are other reasons to believe health care in general is generally the aim of irrational/pointless purchases and poor path selection by customers and professionals. See here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medicine-half (I'm not saying that real, rational health care isn't possible, just that it's a more difficult industry and is has a customer base with poor understanding of what constitutes the best means for their ends; popular art would be comparable in many ways, also somewhat regulated indirectly by state controls on media access).

3) Is this based on your personal experience or on some sort of statistics? If statistics, please provide some references.

There is some personal experience involved, but largely comes from reading the journals and work of various therapeutic agencies and their stated goals and methods internally. They're fully part of a Progressive ideology dedicated to eliminating the 'sickness' of anyone who is discontent with their diseased system. While some exceptions may exist, they are as rare as among Priests; nonsense and incompetence are the rule. This is an industry that has never existed independent of state subsidy. The closest exception would be some talk therapists or the private consumption of mood altering drugs. The Mental Health industry's education, authority, monopoly and often power over others derive entirely from the State and they are well adapted to this condition.

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The psychopharma industry's 'anti-depressents', etc. are simply assumed to 'work' despite the lack of any understanding of a causal mechanism and the fact that over the long term most of their 'results' decline to statistical error.

How Cymbalta Is Believed to Work

There are many theories about the cause of depression. One common theory is that depression is caused by an imbalance of naturally occurring substances in the brain.

Although the exact way that Cymbalta works in people is unknown, it is believed to be related to an increase in the activity of serotonin and norepinephrine, which are two naturally occurring substances in the brain. Cymbalta is in a class of

Also:

Role of norepinephrine in depression.
(PMID:10703757)
Department of Psychiatry, University of Arizona Medical Center, Tucson, USA. delgado@u.arizona.edu
The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry [2000, 61 Suppl 1:5-12]
Type: Journal Article, Review
Abstract Highlight Terms qmark.png
Diseases(3) Species(1) Chemicals(7)
This article reviews the role of norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (5-HT) in depression and the therapeutic effects of antidepressant drugs from the perspective of human neurotransmitter depletion studies. The data reviewed suggest that both noradrenergic and serotonergic systems are involved in antidepressant action, but the specific impairment that underlies depression is unclear and is likely to vary among patients. Results from neurotransmitter depletion studies in depressed patients who have responded to treatment suggest that, while interactions between NE and 5-HT are likely, neither of these 2 neurotransmitter systems is the final common pathway for the therapeutic effect ofantidepressant drugs. NE-selective antidepressant drugs appear to be primarily dependent on the availability of NE for their effects. Likewise, 5-HT-selective antidepressants appear to be primarily dependent on the availability of 5-HT for their effects. Antidepressants that cause effects on both noradrenergic and serotonergic systems-such as mirtazapine-may be dependent on the availability of both neurotransmitters for their effects. Neither 5-HT nor NE depletion induced clinical depression in healthy subjects or worsened depression in unmedicated symptomatic patients with major depression. This finding suggests that the cause of depression is more complex than just an alteration in the levels of 5-HT and/or NE. For some patients, depression may be more directly caused by dysfunction in brain areas or neuronal systems modulated by monoamine systems. We propose that antidepressant drugsmay enhance neurotransmission in normal noradrenergic or serotonergic neurons and, through a time-dependent but as yet undiscovered process, restore function to brain areas modulated by monoamineneurons. Future research should focus on understanding the adaptive changes that follow enhancement of synaptic levels of monoamines in neuronal circuits of the frontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus. Research investigating the neurobiology of depression may be more informed if the focus is shifted to investigating areas of the brain modulated by monoamine systems rather than themonoamine systems themselves.
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