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Comment by phren0logy | Hacker News Reader

I understand your points, and there have been many appropriate checks and balances introduced to avoid past abuses (which were very real).

That said, I have a hard time feeling that allowing a person to go untreated and end up in jail or prison is in their best interest.

Here's a quick link about "transinstitionalization": http://www.namisacramento.org/advocacy/docs/Mental%20Health%...

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It's a neat categorization to say troubling psychiatric practices are in the past - I don't think it's accurate.

An example apart from how Psychiatry profits from inserting itself into the legal system - we have society-wide acceptance of the chemical imbalance theory of depression - still without evidence. Because this model is a billions-of-dollars money pipeline for drug companies, who take the bad PR on the nose, and ...psychiatrists.

I have written much less than I could, but I find almost everything about psychiatry - it's influences from Freud, etc. to be problematic.

I know there's no chance of swaying anybody personally invested in the field towards this viewpoint. It's like telling a start-up founder they aren't actually changing the world for the better : /

[1] https://joannamoncrieff.com/2014/05/01/the-chemical-imbalanc...

You might be surprised. I also find the reach of industry to be very troubling, and there's a clear incentive for profit. Many of us continue to push back, and demand better evidence. The erosion of federal funding for research is a concerning development, as it leaves much of the funding to industry sources, who are motivated by profit.

In direct response to these kind of concerns, the NIMH has initiated a totally new research framework to study mental disorders: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtm...

> we have society-wide acceptance of the chemical imbalance theory of depression - still without evidence. Because this model is a billions-of-dollars money pipeline for drug companies, who take the bad PR on the nose, and ...psychiatrists.

Are you just referring to overuse of antidepressants caused by that theory, or are you suggesting that antidepressants don't work? Because there's good evidence that at least in severe cases of depression, antidepressants do work and are more effective than other therapies alone. [1] Even if we don't really know how they work…

[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2...

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