Joklem wrote:
Psychologists, maybe - it depends on what the patient is looking for. But psychiatrists are Medical Doctors. They practice medicine. Dismissing a field of medicine because of your ignorance of it does not make it void.
Ok, great, they're MDs that don't have the courage or skill to practice real medicine, so they choose to work in a field that requires nothing more than dressing up in silly costumes - professional-looking clothing - talk a lot of psychobabble and prescribe meds. As opposed to a field of medicine with definable scientific principles and real consequences for making right or wrong decisions rather than being able to rationalize whatever outcome transpires.
Not so long ago these "experts" prescribed lobotomy and EST. The same idiots who think these guys know all because they have a degree are the same idiots who thought they knew all when they were slicing people's brains out because they didn't have any better ideas how to solve human problems. And it's the same people, the same institutions, the same arrogant pseudoscience at work.
The proof is, as always, in the pudding. Psychologists are very good at slurping up hundreds of thousands of bucks a year in fees, but they don't have a silver bullet to fix people's ailments any more than people who do what they claim to do, mentors, salesmen, counselors, elders - people who really know people. Meanwhile MDs who actually do real medicine are out there prescribing antibiotics and doing corrective surgery.
Joklem wrote:
I.e. you can't dismiss a disorder because you don't believe in it or don't have the knowledge to understand it. I'll use ADHD in this example because it's both "controversial" (which is absurd), and it's a prime example of a chemical imbalance. The brain of an ADHD patient has lower dopamine activity than the normal brain. It's cause stems from either, or a combination of, genetical and environmental factors. Some are born with a brain that simply has lower dopamine activity, and some develop the symptoms due to diet, social or physical factors.
You could say the same thing about miasma theory or phrenology. I know they're pseudosciences because anyone with a brain can identify reality empirically.
The brain is a chemical organ. Everything it does is chemical. Correlation does not prove causation. ADHD is a lie made up to placate shitty parents. Proof being, whack the kid with a ruler, or give him parents and teachers that don't suck, and watch him learn to read. We didn't have these problems 50 or 100 or 1000 or 2000 years ago, and there's a reason why.
Joklem wrote:
P.S. I'm one of those, soon to be an (AD)PhD.
So in other words, you're pleading your own case. In reality you only prove the vacuity of this supposed qualification.
You can get a doctorate in a lot of liberal fields with no real rigor or substance. Social science, humanities, philosophy, whatever - doesn't prove you have two neurons to rub together. What utility do these people have? What skills, what wisdom, that the lay educated do not?
Believe me, if a doctorate was hard proof someone knows what they're doing or that the associated field is legitimate, the world would be far better off than it is. Big decision-makers in our society with doctorates make moronic decisions that lay people can see clearly are foolish all the time - go look at economic or business management, for example.