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Comment by ajkjk | Hacker News Reader

That makes no sense to me, if you're trying to deal with mental health problems and struggling you're going to be looking for new ideas from any source. Doctors are good at giving garden-variety medical advice that's validated by studies, but there's so many other ideas out there that they're not going to know about. Their background gives them expertise on what medicine says about mental health, not about the human experience itself.

Anecdotally I've been to therapists and doctors that were no help and I've read an article online [1] which was a tremendous help.

[1]: https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob...

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Strangers on the internet are usually pretty good at helping you self-justify whatever it is you want to do, because no matter what position you take, whether it is a really good idea or not, there is always someone on the internet who agrees with you.

Fine, if that gets you taking action when you're depressed, so be it.

Anyway in discussions like this I feel like what it lost is that you will actually respond to how compelling the thing someone else is saying is. Like, it's not "oh a bunch of opinions, I'll get influenced by one randomly and it's probably wrong". It's "oh, a bunch of opinions, which explain why they think they're right and how well it worked for them, I'll incorporate that into my own understanding".

> Doctors are good at giving garden-variety medical advice that's validated by studies

I've found they're more often than not ignorant of the latest studies, as well. Doctors are put on a pedestal in our society that very few of them deserve. A solid 2/3s of the ones I've seen are over-confident, dismissive, and often peddling out of date information. The rare ones that truly focus on their field and put their patients above their egos are difficult to find and even harder to get to with average US insurance.

How common are the ones that check their ego? 1 in 10?

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