Posted by bob on April 6, 2000, at 12:25:56
In reply to Re: FP has good point, posted by saint on April 6, 2000, at 11:39:40
If you want to talk about a non-medical therapeutic approach, you can *always* start a new thread.
As I mentioned before, if you've been around here long enough, you've seen them come and go, just like any thread topic comes and goes.
James is right: medical problems need medical solutions. Which means those saying we should talk about approaches other than psychopharmacology are also right -- my GP may prescribe Lipitor for my high cholesterol, but he busts my chops about diet and exercise as well if I've been slacking there. Behaviors do contribute to medical problems and medical solutions as much as drugs or clinical procedures.
So, again, if someone out there wants to start a thread about therapy, well, start a thread about therapy and let's chat!
This thread itself has been quite interesting nonetheless. Perhaps it answers its own question of why are there so many threads about medication. This thread is, in essence, a thread about a type of therapy far more than it is about the efficacy, merits, dangers, etc. of any one specific medication. And it continues to focus on that one specific therapeutic approach while failing to spawn any new threads about other approaches. That has to say something in and of itself ... so give it some thought.
I'm not one to believe in the purported objectivity of science, medical or otherwise, but the one thing that psychopharmacology has compared to just about any other approach to treating mental disorders is that it is arguably the most "scientific." What is it that makes a psychiatrist out of a psychologist? The sort of training in a "hard science" (biology, chemistry, and all the specializations medicine has from them) that those in the "soft sciences" (i.e., social sciences) don't get.
I think we spend so much time talking about meds here for many reasons -- the speed in which they work, the hope that can engender, the problems they cause when they fail -- but it is the verisimilitude of scientific objectivity and generalizability that allows us to believe that the way Drug A works for you means it may very well work the same way for me, regardless of the environmental or contextual particulars of our different psychological problems.
That generalizability of effect cannot be said for any other approach or treatment.
Well, with the exception of, perhaps, a frontal lobotomy.
cheers,
bob (with a bottle in front of me)
poster:bob
thread:28936
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000401/msgs/29086.html