The Shamanic View of Mental Illness (2010)

Re:The Shamanic View of Mental Illness (2010) by _wwz4 on Thursday April 13, 2017 @09:44AM (#14106785)

Some other questions that may be more relevant:

  * Which model is more likely to prevent someone with mental illness from harming himself or others because of incorrect diagnosis?
  * Which model is more likely to lead to scientifically sound treatments for his malady?
  * Which model is more likely to encourage people to generally think rationally about the real world around us?

Science isn't embraced because it's always right and every impact of its rational-based methodology doesn't have any losers anywhere. The shaman and the priest and the holistic healer all tend to be on the losing end of the argument when Science is given primacy. The tradeoffs of Science vs everything else have proven to be worth it over and over.

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Re:The Shamanic View of Mental Illness (2010) by wu-ikkyu on Thursday April 13, 2017 @09:49AM (#14106836)

By science, do you mean objectively observable/testable inquiry and analysis? Because that's not what psychiatry is. Medical pathology is an objective science, but psychiatry is subjective conjecture, generously classified as a "soft science".

>The tradeoffs of Science vs everything else have proven to be worth it over and over.

I hate to invoke Godwin's law here but it is worth noting the key role "science" and psychiatry played in propagating the Holocaust[1]. If we're going to play the science card, we should make sure it's objective.

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23511221

Edit: curious you spell Science with a capital "S"

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Re:The Shamanic View of Mental Illness (2010) by _wwz4 on Friday April 14, 2017 @09:16AM (#14114259)

I'm not going to defend psychiatry as hard science, but it is scientifically-based. Theories exist based upon our existing data. Studies are performed. Experiments are performed. Data is analyzed and old theories are discarded because they don't match the data while new theories are proposed to explain the data. Furthermore, other hard sciences in biology and chemistry feed into psychiatry to provide the basic framework.

The problem with psychiatry isn't that they aren't trying or that they're not going about it the best way that we know how. The problem is that the human mind is still too complex at the macro level to be easily testable. But Science has shown again and again that it's the best way to go about determining how reality works. We shouldn't abandon it now and prefer delusional thinking because it has a minor winner in making a patient feel better. That said, tell the patient whatever he may want to hear in the psychiatric ward. Just don't try to pass it off as legitimate outside of the mental institution.

Regarding capitalization: Sometimes I find it helpful capitalize schools of thought that embody more than just a casual set of principles. I can do some science in the lab, but not really have a lot of trust in Science as a way to live life, run society, and generally approach problem solving. I do the same thing when writing about being liberal vs being "a Liberal".

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Re:The Shamanic View of Mental Illness (2010) by wu-ikkyu on Monday April 17, 2017 @11:53AM (#14131814)

>The problem is that the human mind is still too complex at the macro level to be easily testable

I agree this is the root problem, which is why I think psychiatry, if it wants to be a legitimate medical science, should adhere to medical ethics, i.e. primum non nocere. Otherwise, psychiatry patients are akin to lab rats.

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