<story><title>How Silicon Valley is dealing with mental illness</title><url>http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/10/technology/silicon-valley-depression-austen-heinz/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TTPrograms</author><text>Why do you claim that mainstream psychiatry is ineffective? How do we know that people simply aren&amp;#x27;t taking advantage of mainstream psychiatry (to the degree necessary)?</text></item><item><author>andrewvc</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve lost 2 people I know to suicide in tech. I&amp;#x27;ve known others who&amp;#x27;ve come close. We need to do something about it. What, I don&amp;#x27;t know, but mainstream psychiatry isn&amp;#x27;t that effective.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andrewvc</author><text>The idea that there is one &amp;quot;mainstream psychiatry&amp;quot; is somewhat naive. It varies quite a bit from country to country, and the US does it somewhat horribly.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t take my word for it, the man who chaired the committee for the DSM-V thinks so (nd he wrote a book about it called &amp;quot;Saving Normal&amp;quot;. Regardless of what you think about psychiatry from a theoretical perspective (e.g. what studies show), there is a MASSIVE gap between what practicing psychiatrists do and what happens in studies. As a country we are over-diagnosed (the DSM says x% of the population will have a given condition based on clinical research, yet somehow a massively larger # of people will be prescribed pills for it due to incompetent doctors and drug company advertising..&lt;p&gt;On top of that we have almost no idea what the mechanism of action is for any of these drugs. We take people, let&amp;#x27;s look at veterans for example, who have gone through traumatic events and say: &amp;quot;I guess going through that war there messed up some chemicals, take these!&amp;quot;. It turns out there is a lot more in the way of treatment than just pills. At the same time these people are living in the streets and have no connection to community or family. There are more dimensions to mental illness than just chemicals in the brain. Here&amp;#x27;s an interesting non-pill related approach that&amp;#x27;s apparently helped some vets who were beyond treatment from pills ( &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;what-does-a-parrot-know-about-ptsd.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;what-does-a-parro...&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s another example, in convenient peer-review form &amp;quot;The findings, from by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States, concluded that schizophrenia patients who received a program intended to keep dosages of antipsychotic medication as low as possible and emphasize one-on-one talk therapy and family support made greater strides in recovery over the first two years of treatment than patients who got the usual drug-focused care.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;20&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;talk-therapy-found-to-ease-schizophrenia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;20&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;talk-therapy-found-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I can only open the door here, the material is complex and voluminous. I do encourage you to research and read on your own. The foundations of mainstream psych in American are shaky, and drug companies truly have an undue amount of influence in shaping research and policy.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Silicon Valley is dealing with mental illness</title><url>http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/10/technology/silicon-valley-depression-austen-heinz/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TTPrograms</author><text>Why do you claim that mainstream psychiatry is ineffective? How do we know that people simply aren&amp;#x27;t taking advantage of mainstream psychiatry (to the degree necessary)?</text></item><item><author>andrewvc</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve lost 2 people I know to suicide in tech. I&amp;#x27;ve known others who&amp;#x27;ve come close. We need to do something about it. What, I don&amp;#x27;t know, but mainstream psychiatry isn&amp;#x27;t that effective.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mysticlabs</author><text>A lot of people who commit suicide are typically on antidepressants and seeing therapists. Yet they never report this in the media. Antidepressants even carry a black box warning they can increase suicidal thinking.&lt;p&gt;Wouldn&amp;#x27;t surprise me if half the valley was on meds of some kind.&lt;p&gt;Psychiatry is mostly based on an unproven hypothesis of chemical imbalance in the brain. Of which there&amp;#x27;s no actual scientific evidence to back up this claim. In fact, studies have concluded antidepressants can cause imbalances where nonexisted before, and can cause severe life threatening withdrawals if you stop taking them suddenly.&lt;p&gt;Psychiatry is a pretty flawed practice in my opinion as well. I&amp;#x27;m sure it helps some people, but it also does a lot of harm as well.</text></comment>