Posted by Hello321 on April 19, 2016, at 6:54:40
In reply to Re: Helping those with mental health conditions, posted by Tabitha on April 19, 2016, at 1:29:44
> > I try to look at all sides. I try to understand the possibilities of all sides. [...]
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> I think the argument here is that all treatments (including conventional and alternative) work, they just work for different people. If so, then it would make sense to take a trial-and-error approach, and it would not make sense to criticize anyone else's choices. If Lou says the advice from his vision of the Rider on the white horse cured him, that's right for him. If Hello321 says Grain Brain cured them, that's right for them. If others say that psych med combos keep them functional, that's right for them.
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> As it turns out though, it's more difficult than you might think to tell if a treatment works. Here is a good summary of ways people can be fooled. http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/altbelief.html
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> It's also pretty easy to make up a treatment. You just come up with a plausible sounding argument and add some testimonials. If you want to appeal to the more science-minded folks, you can claim it is "evidence-based" and add reference notes to some studies that, on closer inspection, turn out to be of poor quality or irrelevant to the question of whether the treatment works on humans.
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> Nobody has time to try every treatment under the sun. Some of them (such as special diets and supplement regimens) take months and hundreds of dollars to try. Given the human tendency to be poor at judging whether a treatment works or not, it's a better use of time to try approaches with better evidence first. FDA approval is a good low water mark.
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> Once you get into the non-FDA-approved stuff, it's very unlikely that the treatment has been tested on humans in controlled experiments. Testimonials and self-experimentation are much poorer evidence than controlled experiments.
Exactly. Just wanted to make sure thecword was getting out.
poster:Hello321
thread:1088191
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20160331/msgs/1088284.html