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Comment by meritganset | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, you made a claim that "mental health treatment has come an incredibly long way". And the only evidence you have offered to back that up is a vague personal anecdote.

The poster was simply providing their viewpoint on the state of mental health that differs from yours.

I understand these things can cause strong emotions, but you don't do yourself or your stance any favors by letting it get the best of you here.

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Vague personal anecdote's versus hutzlibu's vague personal anecdotes.

Quite frankly, the pills work. A lot of people would unable to lead normal lives without them.

> Quite frankly, the pills work.

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I had a seizure because of medication I was put on for a mental illness I didn't believe I had. I wasn't 18 and my parents essentially forced me to take them. The pills didn't do anything for me besides give me a seizure that easily could've killed me (I was hospitalized).

There's also actual research suggesting these pills can increase suicide attempts.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353604/

There is enormous money to be made suggesting these pills are useful, so I don't just assume it to be true. I also know many other people who feel anti-depressants ruined their lives. I also know many people who feel anti-depressants saved their lives.

It's not black and white. Personally, I feel the efficacy of pills for mental health are greatly exaggerated - but it's easy to see why I might be biased.

Also the placebo effect is right on their heels in terms of effectiveness

Can the placebo exist without the "real" pills? More practically, does anyone prescribe placebo outside of a clinical trial?

Homeopathic treatment is largely placebo.

A board certified doc will never prescribe placebo he will get sued, plenty of ppl are getting them via alternative medicine though

Yes. It is the same real, measurable response you would get from an effective medication even though no medication was given. In many cases the rate at which placebo occurs is surprisingly high. (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306437)

I know what placebos are. But the effect is created by telling the patient you gave them medication. So I don't believe it's possible to make "treatment by placebo" a standard.

> a mental illness I didn't believe I had

I don't know your personal journey, but I think it would be fairly easy to find people with very deep, very real mental health problems who fully believe they do not have a problem.

> The pills didn't do anything for me

Again, I don't know your personal journey, but as a counter anecdote when I started taking medication I couldn't tell if they were having any effect at all, but apparently it had such an effect that some of the people around me could tell me the day I started taking it, along with measurable improvements.

Not to invalidate your experiences, just adding to the anecdotal pool

They do work. They also harm many people also.

To be fair, even though I am not, myself, a therapist, I have been dealing with them for decades.

It's not "vague, personal anecdotes." It's real world experience.

But you are right. This is upsetting, and seeing the way that it is being treated by people that I respect, otherwise, is upsetting.

This is the last I'll say anything.

Vague personal anecdotes doesn't mean they are not from the real world.

You're taking someone else's valid criticism of the state of the therapy methods available today and taking it personally as well as unwarrantedly attributing it to a lack of sympathy.

You fail to understand that the goal of criticizing the therapy method is precisely so we may find ways to improve it.

What makes this single point of view a valid criticism?

What makes it not valid? It would actually be great to have an answer to that instead of the parent's complaints

Because, getting back to the original point, stating "Mental health treatment has come an incredibly long way, just in the last couple of decades" without offering any substantive support for this viewpoint (regardless of whether one's anecdotes are "real world" or not) is, in and of itself, a valid criticism. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide a rationale to back it up.

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