Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 106 posts

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#11

Post by 7952 »

yamrzou wrote: post #2

Fascinating story. Thanks for sharing. > Ray’s mother asked the Lodge to give him antidepressants. But to the Lodge psychiatrists the premise of this form of treatment – to be cured without insight into what had gone wrong – seemed superficial and cheap. Drugs “might bring about some symptomatic relief”, Ross, Ray’s psychiatrist, acknowledged, “but it isn’t going to be anything solid in which he can say, ‘Hey, I’m a…

I take SSRIs for anxiety and feel like the opportunity cost of trying to survive without them is too great. The good things in my life would be too disrupted by the extra load of tolerating those feelings. And those good things are protective against anxiety.

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#12

Post by [deleted] »

yamrzou wrote: post #2

Fascinating story. Thanks for sharing. > Ray’s mother asked the Lodge to give him antidepressants. But to the Lodge psychiatrists the premise of this form of treatment – to be cured without insight into what had gone wrong – seemed superficial and cheap. Drugs “might bring about some symptomatic relief”, Ross, Ray’s psychiatrist, acknowledged, “but it isn’t going to be anything solid in which he can say, ‘Hey, I’m a…

[deleted]

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#13

Post by knaik94 »

pessimizer wrote: post #9
98codes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what they're saying is true, to me it rings just as misguided as not taking pain medicine when you have a broken leg until it has properly set first. Medication for neurological issues isn't and shouldn't be the end-all-be-all but can indeed be a way to manage the issues at hand while teaching the tools needed to deal with the symptoms via therapy if possible.

Nobody is doing studies to prove that morphine works better than placebo.

Studies to show morphine is better than placebo in treating what?

Here is a link for Study protocol for a randomised, placebo-controlled, single-blind phase II study of the efficacy of morphine for dyspnoea in patients with interstitial lung disease (JORTC-PAL 15) https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/5/e043156 .

I would suggest you look into the drug approval process in the US, I think you will learn a lot.

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#14

Post by throwaway0asd »

Talking about mental health is extremely challenging. On one extreme there is stupid: the people who believe none of this science is a form of health, or even real. On the other hand there is the disabled: the people who likely have undiagnosed mental health disorders themselves and are incapable of processing any of these conversations.

Such failures to process these vital concerns touch wide reaching aspects of discourse from politics to work to culture generally and that is quite a problem.

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#15

Post by matheusmoreira »

jbandela1 wrote: post #3

How good are we at explaining large ML model outputs? My understanding is not very good? And that is with us having a very deep understanding of the hardware, software, algorithms, and mathematics involved. Now let’s suppose that you run your ML model on a computer and you get bad results. Two experts show up. One says that you have a faulty memory chip and that they can fix what is wrong with the memory chip and the…

And neither of them really knows anything, they just came up with reasonable hypotheses to explain observed behavior, figured out what to do about them, ran tests to confirm and then approved those treatments on the basis that they worked more often than not. What does this stuff even do? Not sure, they just have proof that it's effective.

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#16

Post by themitigating »

e40 wrote: post #6
98codes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what they're saying is true, to me it rings just as misguided as not taking pain medicine when you have a broken leg until it has properly set first. Medication for neurological issues isn't and shouldn't be the end-all-be-all but can indeed be a way to manage the issues at hand while teaching the tools needed to deal with the symptoms via therapy if possible.

There are always side effects and there is a real fear by many that they will be dependent on those drugs and have to live with the real side effects.

Then it's a balance between side effects and the original issue.

Isn't this common knowledge and accepted? I feel like debate makes no sense unless your motive is create more mistrust in science

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#17

Post by themitigating »

pessimizer wrote: post #9
98codes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what they're saying is true, to me it rings just as misguided as not taking pain medicine when you have a broken leg until it has properly set first. Medication for neurological issues isn't and shouldn't be the end-all-be-all but can indeed be a way to manage the issues at hand while teaching the tools needed to deal with the symptoms via therapy if possible.

Nobody is doing studies to prove that morphine works better than placebo.

The effects of morphine are profound and obvious. It's like asking for a study to prove crack does something.

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#18

Post by [deleted] »

jbandela1 wrote: post #3

How good are we at explaining large ML model outputs? My understanding is not very good? And that is with us having a very deep understanding of the hardware, software, algorithms, and mathematics involved. Now let’s suppose that you run your ML model on a computer and you get bad results. Two experts show up. One says that you have a faulty memory chip and that they can fix what is wrong with the memory chip and the…

[deleted]

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#19

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #18
jbandela1 wrote: post #3

How good are we at explaining large ML model outputs? My understanding is not very good? And that is with us having a very deep understanding of the hardware, software, algorithms, and mathematics involved. Now let’s suppose that you run your ML model on a computer and you get bad results. Two experts show up. One says that you have a faulty memory chip and that they can fix what is wrong with the memory chip and the…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Psychiatry Wars: a lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

#20

Post by mjburgess »

jbandela1 wrote: post #3

How good are we at explaining large ML model outputs? My understanding is not very good? And that is with us having a very deep understanding of the hardware, software, algorithms, and mathematics involved. Now let’s suppose that you run your ML model on a computer and you get bad results. Two experts show up. One says that you have a faulty memory chip and that they can fix what is wrong with the memory chip and the…

I'm unsure as to the thesis of this comment: what's your point?

Perhaps I just don't buy your premise. We understand ML models very-well, but we don't like the explanation. Models are on a spectrum from parametric where a data distribution is assumed, to non-parametric, where it isnt. In the non-param case, models largely remember compressed "averages" of historical data.

The sense in which we dont "understand" how, eg., a NN comes to a prediction is only in the sense that we cannot, a priori, locate the specific subset of historical data that it has taken a weighted average-of... but we know well that this is what its doing. ie., something incredibly dumb and boring.

Post reply on HN