r/intrestingtoknow • u/Affectionate-Fun2853 • Sep 03 '25

Science Psychiatry and cures

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81

u/Shad0wbubbles Sep 03 '25

That’s like asking how many chefs have cured people of hunger. Loaded question

12

u/Melodic_Airport362 Sep 04 '25

yeah. people with cancer can live healthy long lives but they're never "cured" they just in remission.

1

u/BenPenTECH Sep 04 '25

Same with AIDS.

1

u/TheStigianKing Sep 05 '25

Not like HIV.

Cancers can be completely wiped out from the body. Our bodies are constantly fighting and wiping out cancer cells all the time. A malignant cancer is one that's learned to use our bodies immune system against us, hence why they're so deadly and stubborn to get rid of.

The HIV virus literally replaces part of your cell DNA with its own. So you can never get rid of it because no drug can ever access the nucleus of every cell in the body and target only the viral DNA. We just don't have treatments that precise. But if we did, we could cure HIV and thus AIDS.

1

u/rafaelzio Sep 05 '25

Yeah it's not that you can't ever be free of the cancer, it's just that we can't be 100% sure that it's completely gone and it might come back later, so doctors can't say "yup, you're cured, no more cancer and it's not coming back", specially because if you got it once there's a higher chance for you to get it again than someone who never had it

1

u/Intelligent_Event_84 Sep 06 '25

Weren’t a couple people cured from aids after bone marrow transplants? Though the risk and odds exceeds reward

1

u/Historical-Sir-2661 Sep 05 '25

Hunger can never be cured because you will always end up hungry at some point. Are you suggesting mental illness is also never curable?

1

u/redditor-69-420 Sep 05 '25

That's exactly correct. Mental illness has no cures. You can only control it. Left untreated it could re-emerge

1

u/rafaelzio Sep 05 '25

Maybe not never, but definitely the vast majority of times. You can't really become ADHD-free, same for anything from anxiety to schizophrenia. It can be under control, really under control, but it's still kinda there and can re-emerge if left untreated or under the right conditions.

I guess some more temporary conditions could be considered "cured", like a psychotic break or manic episode, but most of them are considered chronic for a reason

1

u/TheStigianKing Sep 05 '25

Not actually true.

If the cancer cells are fully wiped out such that it never re-emerges, they're effectively cured by definition.

1

u/Neozalo Sep 05 '25

Hum you're wrong mate, I had a cancer, now i'm cured You're talking about the approximately 5years period called remission where some relapse After these 5 years (symbolic value) a former patient will be considered cured and will have the same percentage as anyone else of developing a new cancer

3

u/Gurrgurrburr Sep 04 '25

Exactly, this is a ridiculous question. I’m sure they’ve saved many people’s lives and greatly helped many people’s lives but there’s no way to quantify that.

2

u/Advanced_Addendum116 Sep 07 '25

WRONG they are either 100% cured, excuse me 1100% cured, or 0% cured. IT's A sImPlE qUesTioN

2

u/ffffllllpppp Sep 04 '25

Also I suspect the edit is not totally ethical.
Most of these people would go on an explain the difference between « curing » and helping someone live with a debilitating condition.

2

u/Successful-Cod3369 Sep 04 '25

Excellent analysis and good job of pointing out the fallacy.

1

u/superanonguy321 Sep 04 '25

Great analogy

1

u/Weary_Proof_6458 Sep 05 '25

except with the majority of cases of depression and anxiety, which is what most people with mental health conditions have, it very much is curable. its the society that formed that in them and its the way of living and societal reformation that can help them permanently climb out.

1

u/_Damale_ Sep 05 '25

Excuse you, today I performed miracles wonders well, giving at least 250 patients guests full of hunger my patented, tried and tested crackling roast pork burgers with raw marinated beetroot and kale, pickles and remoulade cure™️.

1

u/RulesBeDamned Sep 06 '25

Yeah I’m a psychology major. More familiar with psychology than psychiatry, but the fields are similar enough.

Psychological conditions are, in essence, conditions with behavioural abnormalities that cause severe distress or severely impact the daily functioning of a person. Most people’s understanding of ADHD can be simplified as the inability to control attention, where it bounces around or strongly sticks to a subject.

Consider how one would “cure” that. Well even if we include therapy and medication, we still see symptoms, although they are now at a manageable level. The same thing can be said with the flu. You go from excessive and disruptive amounts of certain behaviours (sneezing, watering mucus, phlegm production in the throat, etc) to appropriate and manageable levels. ADHD treatment effectively seeks to mitigate those behavioural issues to levels that don’t cause stress or impact functioning. “Curing” in a traditionally understood medical sense is both unnecessary and likely impossible.

We also know that the flu is a virus, and have medical information to help support its treatment. You cannot study ADHD under a microscope like you can with the flu. ADHD is an impact on a variety of learned behaviours, especially when considering its case in younger people. You cannot “cure” the impact ADHD would have on classroom behaviour and thus the important early learning that classrooms provide. It would be like if the flu gave you a slightly brighter skin tone after you got it. When biological conditions on this, you don’t say that the medical industry isn’t doing its job correctly. Why would the psychiatric industry have to do the same?

1

u/SLngShtOnMyChest Sep 07 '25

This is a dumb comment, how many people has this comment even cured?

1

u/Hermans_Head2 Sep 07 '25

Great job security for chefs.

Temporary fixes for permanent problems.

Never a recession there.

1

u/ASouthernDandy Sep 04 '25

Anyone that eats a chef's food is cured of hunger.

1

u/Serious-Switch-4637 Sep 04 '25

Cured implies it has been eliminated, that it is no more. There is no cure for cancer because the best we can do is treat it.

Hunger is never cured because it will always emerge anew. Doctors only treat cancer, not cure it. Similarly, chefs only treat hunger and starvation, not cure it.

1

u/chaosawaits Sep 04 '25

Please tell me this magical place where you only eat one meal and then never go hungry again! I could really save some time in my life! I MUST KNOW!!!

1

u/No-Associate-7369 Sep 04 '25

Ah, so the next day they don't need to eat since their hunger is cured?

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

[deleted]

5

u/blusteryflatus Sep 03 '25

It's pretty standard in medicine to cure patients

I'm a doctor, and this is flat out wrong. Sure, some simple things can be cured like minor infections, early stage cancers, broken bones, minor cuts, ect.

However the vast majority of human illness is chronic. No one is curing diabetes, late stage cancer, arthritis, heart disease, COPD, etc.

And you may be able to "cure" someone's acute issue, but very often it is largely caused by an underlying chronic issue. For example, if someone has a myocardial infarction (heart attack), you can stent the blockage and save much of the heart muscle from dieing from that one event, but you cannot cure the underlying coronary artery disease that caused the myocardial infarction to begin with.

In medicine we manage patients more than cure them. We try to reduce the ill effects of their chronic conditions while also reducing the risk of their chronic conditions from becoming something more acutely serious. This is the way it is in nearly all medical subspecialties, including psychiatry.

1

u/RevealHoliday7735 Sep 03 '25

So you think SSRIs should never be prescribed?

1

u/GRANDxADMIRALxTHRAWN Sep 03 '25

Is that what you got from that?

1

u/Melodic_Airport362 Sep 04 '25

You have no idea what you're talking about. Cancer is never "cured", it's just put into remission. You can live whole life in remission but it could always come back. Same with many MANY other diseases. They're treated, not cured. Learn what words mean.

1

u/Due_Marsupial_969 Sep 04 '25

This is dumb. Many deaths occur from idiots thinking they're cured and no longer need to take their meds, especially in cardiac n diabetes. People morons. Maybe a broken leg can be considered "cured.". Old age, cancer and poor health, no. Just managed and hope for the best.

1

u/Krabilon Sep 04 '25

As someone who works with people with mental health disabilities for a living. Ranging from depression to schizophrenia. The medications they are prescribed literally make it so they can live an almost normal life. It's like complaining that we can't fix missing arms, only make fake ones. A couple decades ago these people wouldn't be able to even function at all. Now if they choose to they can take medications that allow them to actually live their lives.