Psychiatry – the medical speciality that combines empathy and science

An article in the Guardian, paid for by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

https://amp.theguardian.com/royal-c...speciality-that-combines-empathy-and-science?

https://twitter.com/user/status/1004658591113105408

 

"Psychiatry – the medical speciality that combines empathy and science"

 

"Psychiatry – the medical speciality that combines empathy and science", to make empathence? or sciencathy? emience? pathyence?
or a truthful version,
"Psychiatry – the pseudomedical speciality that corrupts empathy and science"

 

The best thing for brain inflammation is talking
Lol
Lets hope they don't branch out into other brain inflammation diseases

 

This tells me they have an empathy and science problem.

 

We used to think that people went into psychiatry because they were nuts themselves.
I now tend to think that people go into psychiatry because they don't understand other people and think it will tell them how to. It doesn't. So they still don't.

 

My friends who studied psychiatry fall into one of two categories: Those who have trouble getting a grasp on life and think psychiatry will help them (and others) correct this, and those who think they have really figured life out and just need a diploma that will allow them to use all this wisdom to ‘help people’.

 

"Psychiatry – the medical speciality that combines empathy and science" ... producing a result that has neither.

 

Psychiatry--"the medical specialty that combines a pathological worldview with absolute power."

 

When you don't understand the problem solutions will work like crap.
Uppers or ignore your problems. Psychiatry already knows the answers (as if they are gods) so they won't listen when you say these options both suck.

 

I think there's a certain esoteric aspect of it. That it contains transcendental wisdom passed down from gurus like Freud, Lacan et al. - the red pill that allows you to see and manipulate the matrix of the psyche. Analogous to the way some people study Aikido (or whatever) thinking it's an effective martial art but it's really just a nice dance and bit of exercise of little use in a truly dangerous situation.

Heres the slogan - Keith Geraghty was close:
Psychiatry: we're not getting society's best; they're sending us their charlatans, sociopaths, and bullshit artists. And some, I assume, are good people.
(I forget who I adapted that quote from, but I do recall a strong resemblance to that Michael Sharpe chap)

 

I'm sure we all know who

 

I always though psychiatry combined the power of a floor wax with the delicious flavor of a dessert topping...

[Unfortunately, you have to sit through a commercial to see.. "the commercial."]
https://view.yahoo.com/show/saturday-night-live/clip/40020440/shimmer-floor-wax

 

Lol, really. Please explain your level of knowledge about it that allows you to make such a sweeping statement.

 

I don't see the problem. We don't believe the results, do we?

 

If we must.

I actually think it's a pretty fair analogy in some ways for things like the lightning process, CBT, or even 'mindfulness' as applied to illness.

It's a sort of self-referential theory and practice that projects esoteric wisdom and power but, when it comes down to it, doesn't stand up to reality testing.

How so? Well, it is suggestive that nobody in mixed martial arts - no, not even Japanese fighters - incorporates Aikido in their style. Sure, MMA is contrived to an extent but it provides the truest test of what actually works in unarmed combat between two people. Aikido was rapidly discarded because it is not effective.

...Analogously, it is suggestive that ME patients virtually universally reject GET.

I don't mean to dump on Aikido in particular, I'm sure other styles could be substituted, but Aikido is quite well-known and you can find all sorts of goofy demonstration videos of it so I used it. I don't think anybody is wrong or stupid to do and enjoy it - it looks like great exercise and won't damage your brain in contrast MMA. If sold as such I have no problem. But it is misleading and unethical when people profiting from teaching it mislead students into thinking that it is effective in the way we would expect a martial art to be. Now substitute 'martial art' with 'treatment for illness'. Does that make sense?

 

Yes we must, because you yourself use it as an example, surely you should be able to defend it?

And you haven't answered my question, so I'll ask it a slightly different way. Do you have any substantial direct experience of aikido? Yes or no? My informed guess given your answer is not.

Your definition of it not being an effective martial art is that you haven't seen it being used in MMA - a highly artificial sport situation.

In my 20+ years of aikido practice, I've been fortunate not to have to use it in an off-the-mat situation, but many of my training partners, who have included doormen, security personnel and ex-armed forces, as well as ex-bikers who were, at times, all too keen for a fight, have and found it to be more than effective, thanks.

What you seem to be doing is making a lot of assumptions from a position of very little knowledge - analogously, something we see the psychs doing a lot of about ME.

 

To me, the way these things are applied seems to be a misunderstanding of what they are and how we tend to approach them in contemporary culture.

You used the example of aikido - but a true master of any martial art will have taken decades to get to where they are - 10s of 1000s of hours of training. By that stage, the practice of aikido is probably highly effective. But once you start to dilute it with other things, probably less so, unless you spend a similar amount of time to produce a definitive style.

I'm highly suspicious of any therapy like CBT or mindfulness that claims it can be effective after just a weekend or even 12 sessions of practice. That's why I think all the studies focus on the superficial gains, the immediate subjective experience, and why in the long-term, any gains are lost as those superficial effects wear off. But that's not to say that the things they are based on are not useful - but to be truly useful, they need to be practised and understood over a very long time, and need to work with individual needs, and not against them (as GET tends to do). If psychotherapy really wanted to be useful, it would be to enhance the practice of pacing. Maybe some are beginning to realise this.

 

Are you sure you are not being too charitable @Lucibee? What horrifies me about psychotherapy is that to a first approximation we do not even know if it ever does more good than harm. My limited experience of sitting in on three therapists' sessions is that they either were useless or harmful. I have good evidence of harm in another case (the break up of a family based directly on ideas put in the patient's mind by the therapist).

For the martial arts expert at least we have an objective outcome - the opponent on the mat - and convincing evidence of causation. With psychotherapy it is often very unclear which of all sorts of outcomes is most important and rarely clear that any improvement was actually caused by the therapy. For the great majority of psychotherapists I suspect there is no solid evidence available to them throughout their careers as to whether they are doing things right or wrong or getting better at it. It could well be that trainee therapists make people happier than old hacks - I suspect nobody knows.

In short, nobody knows anything much.

The audit on the FINE trial brings this out. The 'supervisors' assume that they know how to do the therapy and that the nurses are making beginners mistakes. But nobody has shown this therapy works in any circumstances so how can the supervisors know?