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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

A psychiatrist that behaves as you describe is literally engaging in malpractice.

Not if he is giving the standard advice everyone in the industry gives. There are lots of conditions where the standard expectation is that "people like you don't really get well" and "symptom management is the name of the game." It would be considered malpractice to even tell people with certain diagnoses that you will shoot for curing them.

But if you don't even try to get someone well, if you only shoot for muddling through, don't you think that has bearing on the kind of results you get? If actually getting them well isn't even a goal, no, of course, you won't get them well.

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This is not a fair summary of your previous point. You previously implied that a psychiatrist will maliciously give information they know to be against the patient's interests purely to continue a financial relationship.

In this second post, you have walked back your irrational and ridiculous claim from "a psychiatrist will give you bad advice so you pay them forever to" "a psychiatrist will offer you evidence and science based advice that doesn't lie to you about your condition or future and instead seeks to give you the best options or advice that evidence teaches us can help"

Sure, that sounds great to me. That's why you trust an expert.

Now you seem to be mostly upset that a specific mental illness or condition isn't curable and may be permanent as the result of damage or pathology, and are blaming humanity's best experts for not having a panacea for your troubles.

I haven't walked anything back. An awful lot of people are woefully misreading what I said in a much more negative light than I intended, then acting like I changed my story when I try to communicate about the issue.

It's probably best for me to walk away at this point. Most of the remarks here do not strike me as good faith engagement.

Part of the problem is that nowadays, people don't even recognise their accusations as such, but consider them benign, universally-understood downsides.

"Professionals tend to act based on financial motives" is among these. You seem to think it's just human nature, and don't even expect anything different. Yet ask any psychologist, and they'll react as the would to an accusation of murder.

That's because in their job, intentional deviations from the standard-of-care can quite easily turn into murder (or manslaughter/negligent homicide to be more precise).

Very similar: accusations against journalists that they are acting on behalf of some publication-wide agenda, take money from the subjects they cover, or write/don't write certain articles with an eye towards the sector's financial future ("The Times studiously avoids mentioning adblockers")

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No, but remarks like this essentially are malicious, regardless of whatever else is going on here. It's basically a personal attack that in no way tries to engage me about whatever point I was trying to make.

The fact that you created an account just moments before taking a dig at me only reinforces the idea that this is absolutely not a good faith comment by you.

There are lots of things that can cause a conversation to go sideways. It's really common for the group to then blame the person at the center. It only serves to compound and entrench the problem.

Its a malicious rhetorical tool to use attempts at clarification as evidence of retreat. That's what politicians do. People here are not professional communicators, you can't expect them to say things perfectly the first time.

it's probably not that they're all stupid and malicious

... any more than psychiatrists are stupid and malicious for acting in accordance with the norms of their profession.

In both cases, people can be wrong without being stupid/malicious, and likewise, people can be wrong whilst adhering firmly to the status quo.

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