"20th Century psychiatrists wrote manuals and procedures for the diagnosis of ‘mental disorders’. They order lab tests and undertake careful study of their patients’ symptoms, and they diagnose the conditions listed in their manuals. They seek regulatory approval of prescriptions to treat the diagnoses. They stopped doing psycho-surgery by mid-century, but still electrocute their patients’ brains when they think the patient will benefit.
They have their own special hospitals, where troubled patients are sent to be stabilized on palliative prescription drugs. The psych wards have little areas for staff to sit in. The staff wear scrubs and badges, keep medical records, and some prescribe prescriptions—[s]he’s the doctor—and they wait for their patients to get better.
They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looks in the other medical specialties. But it doesn’t work. No patient recovers as a result of the allopathic drugs provided. Some patients get better anyways—perhaps because they’re fed, perhaps because they’re kept sober—compounding the profession’s confusion."
It's true. People get better in psychiatric incarceration, because there is a predictable, regular daily schedule. There are meals on schedule. There are groups and stuff. You see the same people all the time. You're off TV and you're off the computer, so you need to face reality. You're relieved of burdens such as bill paying, cooking, cleaning, and running your household. You might color by the numbers or work a puzzle, but you've got reality, and it's stripped down and reduced to its essential components. You tend to get better and saner in this environment, if that's your baseline and that's where you tend to go. If your baseline is insanity, then all this regularity may not help.