What a strange question, what does it mean to cure a patient?
Say a patient goes to a doctor and is diagnosed with heart disease - is there anything that can be done to cure this? Or do we simply alleviate the symptoms to make way for a better life? This is the case with so many illnesses: diabetes, cancer, arthritis, the list is so long.
But do you have the same skepticism of a doctor? Of a surgeon? We are not simple machines, us humans. When there are bugs in us they are often not currently fixable. This applies to psychiatry as much as it does to internal medicine.
It means to restore them to a level of health where they are not dependent on the doctor or medicine for continued care.
> Say a patient goes to a doctor and is diagnosed with heart disease - is there anything that can be done to cure this?
And they'd say there possibly is (such as lifestyle changes), and encourage them to pursue those changes while providing temporary medical relief.
> This is the case with so many illnesses: diabetes, cancer, arthritis, the list is so long.
The fact that we don't yet have a permanent cure for some of these illnesses is considered a major problem. Medical professionals are working tirelessly to find cures for conditions like cancer.
Meanwhile, psychiatrists seem to be almost completely uninterested in finding or promoting permanent cures (even when such cures likely exist, including through lifestyle changes). They want to put you on a lifetime drug regime.
I recognize that we're not going to have permanent cures for everything. But psychiatrists don't have permanent cures for anything. If internal medicine insisted that every condition required costly lifetime treatment, I'd be equally skeptical of it. In cases where a cure isn't available, other specialties admit that the best they can do is treat the symptoms—meanwhile, psychiatrists have an attitude that lifetime drug use is the "cure."
Forgive me, but it seems like you have an exceedingly negative view of psychiatrists.
> And they'd say there possibly is (such as lifestyle changes), and encourage them to pursue those changes while providing temporary medical relief.
But Psychiatrists provide prescriptions as well (drugs, therapy etc) which may or may not lead to lifestyle changes.
> But psychiatrists don't have permanent cures for anything
I think this is being too harsh on psychiatrists. The mind is perhaps the most complex and least understood component of the human body. It is an exceedingly complex organ not yet completely understood. The heart, kidney etc are all functional organs, and their mechanisms for working are pretty well understood at the present time. There is much ongoing research to understand how the brain does work though; just probably not by Psychiatrists.
> Forgive me, but it seems like you have an exceedingly negative view of psychiatrists.
You would be correct. :)
> But Psychiatrists provide prescriptions as well (drugs, therapy etc) which may or may not lead to lifestyle changes.
Sure they do. But if I go to a doctor about my heart disease, they're going to ask me to me about my lifestyle and encourage me to make changes which would improve my condition (in addition to providing medication).
Meanwhile, in my experience psychiatrists will jump straight to medication without any discussion of the underlying lifestyle and adjustments which could improve it. At best, they encourage you to see a therapist as well. (To be honest, I'm somewhat skeptical of the hard division between the disciplines. A cardiologist is not a nutritionist, but they can give you a basic idea of the nutritional roots of heart disease and potential remedies, but psychiatrists seem to be entirely uninterested in anything besides drugs.)
> I think this is being too harsh on psychiatrists.
Is it? I don't necessarily think it's necessarily their fault. As someone else in this thread said, mental health seems to be like medicine prior to germ theory: a whole lot of confidence in symptom reducers of questionable efficacy.
> Medical professionals are working tirelessly to find cures for conditions like cancer.
Researchers are, the doctors at your local hospital are very unlikely to be participating in the research of new cures for anything.
> psychiatrists seem to be almost completely uninterested in finding or promoting permanent cures
Psychiatric research has developed hundreds of new, more advanced medicines in the last 10 years alone. More effective anti-depressants, with different interactions so different populations can take them with less risk of drug interaction. More effective anti-anxiety medications that have lower risk factors. Then there's the research of lifestyle changes - I've never met a psychiatrist who didn't believe that exercise was one of the most effective means of getting through depression!
I believe you're against bad psychiatrists, which I understand and agree with. I'm also against bad medical doctors! Bad surgeons, too - though I believe there's a lot of complexity with measuring the performance of that field in particular.
A good doctor recommends lifestyle changes to patients with say diabetes or heart disease - of course they do. But bad ones just give you the prescriptions for drugs that alleviate the worst symptoms without telling you that there's anything you can do to fix it. I just don't see why we'd attack all doctors for the actions of the worst ones.
Say a patient goes to a doctor and is diagnosed with heart disease - is there anything that can be done to cure this? Or do we simply alleviate the symptoms to make way for a better life? This is the case with so many illnesses: diabetes, cancer, arthritis, the list is so long.
But do you have the same skepticism of a doctor? Of a surgeon? We are not simple machines, us humans. When there are bugs in us they are often not currently fixable. This applies to psychiatry as much as it does to internal medicine.