Is psychiatry pseudoscience?
No.12058617 ViewReplyOriginalReport
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>Allen Frances was chair of the committee that created the DSM-IV. Diagnosis, he says, is “part of the magic,” part of the power to heal patients—and to convince them to endure the difficulties of treatment. “You know those medieval maps?” he says. “In the places where they didn’t know what was going on, they wrote ‘Dragons live here.’” He admits that he thinks that mental illnesses are not true diseases and that he help to widen the diagnosis to include far too many people who are now stigmatised with being mentally ill.
>Tom Insel is the director of the National Institute for Mental Health. “We don’t talk much about this,” he said, but when it comes to mental illnesses, psychiatrists lag far behind their colleagues in other specialties. “Diagnosis is by observation, detection is late, prediction is poor. Etiology is unknown, prevention is undeveloped. Therapy is by trial-and-error. We have no cures, no vaccines. We’re not even working on vaccines. Prevalence has not decreased. Mortality has not decreased.”
>Tom Insel is the director of the National Institute for Mental Health. “We don’t talk much about this,” he said, but when it comes to mental illnesses, psychiatrists lag far behind their colleagues in other specialties. “Diagnosis is by observation, detection is late, prediction is poor. Etiology is unknown, prevention is undeveloped. Therapy is by trial-and-error. We have no cures, no vaccines. We’re not even working on vaccines. Prevalence has not decreased. Mortality has not decreased.”
