On the one hand, the anti-psychiatry movement and critics of biological psychiatry seem to suffer from really serious problems with thinking straight: they criticize reductionism, they seem to like philosophers like Foucault, and when they try to say that mental illness doesn’t exist they seem to go for the “applause lights” of blaming society over the vivid reality of mental illness.
But on the other hand, there seem to be really serious problems with the science of studying mental illness: a tendency to look where it’s easiest to look rather than where the strongest effects are leading to over-emphasis on easily, cleanly detectable factors, massive distortion through the powerful financial incentives of the pharmaceutical industry including ghost-writing papers for scientists and a bad case of the file-drawer effect, and a century-long history of just making shit up.
It’s incredibly daunting to be faced with the task of cutting through this thicket to make a potentially life-changing decision.
Here’s why I turn to Less Wrong in more detail.
On the one hand, the anti-psychiatry movement and critics of biological psychiatry seem to suffer from really serious problems with thinking straight: they criticize reductionism, they seem to like philosophers like Foucault, and when they try to say that mental illness doesn’t exist they seem to go for the “applause lights” of blaming society over the vivid reality of mental illness.
But on the other hand, there seem to be really serious problems with the science of studying mental illness: a tendency to look where it’s easiest to look rather than where the strongest effects are leading to over-emphasis on easily, cleanly detectable factors, massive distortion through the powerful financial incentives of the pharmaceutical industry including ghost-writing papers for scientists and a bad case of the file-drawer effect, and a century-long history of just making shit up.
It’s incredibly daunting to be faced with the task of cutting through this thicket to make a potentially life-changing decision.