Treating depression is guesswork. Psychiatrists are beginning to crack the code

I recently had an hour or so's conversation with a younger but seasoned neuropsychologist who is strongly invested in making logical diagnoses.

It was the first time I actually heard someone in his professional area tie testing results to functional areas of the brain and their inter-dependent interaction.

I'm sure what we discussed will be refined, re-evaluated, and in some cases corrected. But it made sense. From verbal profile and testing down to functional analysis including the insights being gained from successive generations of ever-more-revealing scanning and physical measurement.

Up until now, I've been inclined to call psychiatrists "witch doctors". (And psychotherapists, "rent-a-friends.") Maybe that's beginning to change.

With some people. I still expect the majority are locked into institutional perspectives and career tracks. Despite its call-out to science, the practice of medicine is actually a very conservative -- to the point of not infrequently being counter-productive -- activity. At least, in the U.S.

> The two main treatments are cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a talk-centered approach that gets patients to readjust their habits, and antidepressant medications. Both are about equally effective.

I was under the impression that CBT is actually more effective than medicating, and especially has far less relapses than medication.