schizophrenia is characterized by "some symptoms" and is caused by "some neurological anomalies". the symptoms are not the same in every patient, nor are the causes (and often the cause is totally unknown). this is way too imprecise to meet basic scientific standards, so yes, psychiatry is a soft science or pseudoscience.
I am not sure you know how the process works. Let me explain! There is a unifying body of symptoms that unite schizophrenia as there is for all the more rigidly defined metal disorders. So this very much so is a science that is flying a little blind because we don't know how personality manifests. Just because there isn't an answer right now doesn't mean there isn't one, however. I will agree that many of the softer diagnosis' such as Borderline Personality Disorder can trend towards fucking bullshit and many things can overlap, but as Lanturn said- the fact that they respond similarly to similar drugs indicates there is unity in the response area as well. This means there are two lines of evidence uniting certain disorders, meaning that there
has to be something different about individuals that suffer from them.
psychiatrists prescribe drugs on the basis that "i think x is affecting you and i think y will stop it". compare this to "your foot hurts because you stepped on a nail, lemme pull it out and you'll be fine". medical doctors can do this because they know that every body works basically the same way. on the other hand, every mind works differently.
Every mind works in the same way on a physiological level. Just thing about it this way: A liver will work differently if there is something wrong with it. Again, personality manifestation and understanding it is something that isn't understood. I suspect being the subject of our own study complicates this matter.
i really don't like calling schizophrenia a disease, either. in that video, they state that the girl was born sick because she has recurring hallucinations. it can't be that she's simply a weird kid, it has to be a disease. psychiatry tends to insist that there is some kind of "normal person" and everyone different is "sick". i much prefer to think that everyone is simply different.
As someone who suffers from recurring hallucinations I can tell you that it's not a walk in the park. It's not like your recreational drug trips. "Normal" is basically the average of a functional group of people, which is society. Schizophrenics tend to be strong outliers on this group, trending almost entirely towards nonfunctionality. They don't even bathe themselves or change their underwear.
have you ever seen the sixth sense? the doctor in that film is an example of doing psychiatry right. he never prescribes drugs - in fact he never "cures" the illness of seeing ghosts - but he turns the kid from perpetually scared and upset to very happy. making people happy is what psychiatry should be about - not forcing everyone to conform to the social norm of the day. very few psychiatrists actually attempt to do this because giving out drugs is faster and more profitable.
So you're an advocate of talk therapy > drugs? One of my therapists tried that with me, tried to convince me that everyone was normal. Normal means average, which I am not! Well, talk therapy DOES work really well for some people and helps almost anyone suffering from mental illness. However, I can tell you I have been way more functional and happy in life when medicated...and it's not like I'm taking valium, just stuff that helps stunt the problematic issues I have. So clearly if we are talking analogy, I cancel out that movie!
around the 50s and 60s, homosexuality was considered a mental illness because people considered it "not normal". they don't prescribe drugs to gays any more because being gay is now socially acceptable, but being hyper still isn't. i'm pretty sure that every person in the world could be diagnosed with some sort of mental illness by the right (wrong) psychiatrist.
This is a similar argument that I've heard creationists make, actually. "They weren't right the first time so they can't be right ever." It's progressive, deal with it. Yeah, you're right- most people do have some habits that can land them with symptoms of a disorder or two. This is most likely a relic of genetic drift as well as evolution not being caught up with our current lifestyle. Either that or psych is actually hard to put a pin in or both.
psychiatry isn't in and of itself a bad thing. when it can make people happier, it's a beautiful thing. the problem is that it very rarely does, and in the meantime, it disgraces the notion of human rights in the developed world. institutionalizing people who haven't broken any laws because they're too weird is outrageous. taking away voting rights from people who are different makes an absolute farce of democracy.
Its purpose isn't to make people happy. It's to make people able to cope and function which in turn opens the door for happiness. It has a high enough success rate to be continued, so I think that bumps it way out of the range of "rare." I don't think they take away the right to vote, but in patient mental health treatment is typically reserved for those that are an obvious and strong danger to themselves and others.
the child in that video said the drugs aren't working, so why the fuck is she still taking them?
Perhaps the kid is an ignorant idiot. It's likely the kid is on a loading dose or the wrong meds or that the kid is being a twat.
presumably she doesn't have a choice; her parents are forcing her to. her parents may not be able to stop, either, because psychiatrists can call human rights groups and accuse them of endangering the child. this is blatant abuse of the system to keep people buying drugs.
Umm unless taking the kid off the drugs makes it a danger to itself or others in a very obvious and strong way, the bolded would never happen. I'm assuming the parents keep the child on the drugs because it makes the child manageable. It's why I was on drugs as a child, I didn't have a choice but it allowed me to function and get through school, which was impossible without. Many times kids will say drugs aren't working if they don't FEEL an effect from them. Kids are quite prone to thinking they are 100% in control, even if they are not in control. It's a matter of the kid being an ignorant twat.
in summary, schizophrenia may exist but is not a disease, and psychiatry is (at least partly) a scam for money. "normal people" do not exist.
if it exists and is not a disease, what would you call it? Psych is just suffering more from being an art and a science. They need to whip that shit into shape, take the art shit out of the equation.
