[LordKano]

Psychiatry, psychology etc aren't doing a great job with that.

I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. They're certainly not doing a perfect job but the number of people who have a higher quality of life than a century ago is a real success.

There are people who are living fulfilling lives who would have been housed in mental institutions or who would have long since killed themselves, given the state of mental health care 50 or 60 years ago.

[TheOperator]

I believe its a perfectly fair criticism because honestly what has western psychiatry accomplished on a broad scale over the last two decades? Self-reported mental illess which correlates with poor health outcomes overall has shot up. Suicide rate is up. Resources dedicated to mental health and the mentally ill can't be dedicated elsewhere. There has been a pretty substantial stalling when it comes to developing truly innovative new drugs and therapies. Most of what's being developed are new takes on ssris, cbt, talk therapy etc. Most of the existing therapies are getting less effective over time which I would guess is due to saturation/diminishing returns.

The Mental Health field collectively doesn't know what the fuck it's doing. More time and money is spent on mental health every year and things are actually getting worse. People are not as skeptical of the mental health field as they should be. Either our current efforts are counterproductive or they're failing to address a bigger picture concern which outweighs any positives of increased mental health treatment.

[nategri]

I hail from the hard sciences and used give a all the psy* disciplines a considerable amount of flack. But then, what do you know, I found myself in need of their help, and now I live a much happier life thanks to a doctor who knew their way around the application of CBT. And I'll never talk sh*t again :)