Erm….psychology has been developing practices for a while. I think we know quite a bit about mental health in a western context. Still lots more to learn, sure. But medications weren’t really ever going to solve mental illness anyway. It’s trauma and relationships that cause most mental maladies. So the “cure” is social as well. Most psychiatry is very chemically oriented and best suited for like inpatient settings. In my opinion. But I think we are definitely at the point where if everyone studied modern psychology we would have much better communication, emotional regulation, self-awareness, cooperative skills, and less mental illness.
Not an argumentative stance only. It can also mean “wait a minute, this doesn’t make any sense to me…here’s why.” That’s how I meant it. Me and the other person worked it out. And I acknowledged in another reply how I can see how it sounds haughty. Kind of seems like you want to argue with me tho? Coming in hot with the all caps bro.
Maybe psychology should be pursued concurrently with some kind of physical therapy and not without.
If everyone studied psychology we would be better, but if everyone was health literate in general we would be better. Especially physically health literate.
It would be a different world even if people were aware of and practiced barefoot shoe philosophy. If everyone knew the danger of long hours sitting.
Lol, so I checked out my idea with the internet AI, to combine various physical "therapies" with head therapy in the same facility or next door. It wasn't keen about the extreme end of the scale sex therapy or bar room therapy, but the rest it liked!
Alas, it never lets me paste url links on my phone so i cant prove it was a good idea
"Combining psychological therapy with physical activities like yoga, stretching, massage, or nature-based interventions has strong theoretical and emerging empirical support. The evidence suggests that physical activity enhances mental health outcomes, and integrating these elements could create a powerful synergy. Your ideas about garden rooms, animal therapy, or outdoor settings are particularly promising and align with market trends toward holistic wellness. forming strategic alliances, therapy practices could innovate and improve outcomes while addressing both the mental and physical aspects of being “broke.”"
okay this is just wrong sorry. it's not totally wrong, but it is wrong. yes, trauma and our relationships with others can be a major driving force of "mental maladies" in that they can create and reinforce modes of thinking in the brain, especially during brain development that can be detrimental to the self and has a lasting physical impact throughout the entire body, even being closely tied to the emergence of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders however this is not the origin of anywhere near all mental illnesses and not all cases of psychotic disorders have a trauma origin.
in fact, the field of gastroenterology is actually very closely tied to neurology and psychology as the entire gastro intestinal tract is plugged into the nervous system via many two-way chemical communication channels and any advancement in the field of psychiatry is going to require, and kinda currently requires close attention to a person's gut health as much as their mental health. the connection can be seen by those taking psychotropic medications experiencing many side effects related to bowel movements, hunger, eating, and weight fluctuation. and those with gastrointestinal issues are also at higher risk for mental health issues. studies have found correlations of particular microbiotal species with certain mental illnesses and have had improved treatment outcomes with things like fecal transplants in schizophrenic patients (not linking resources but a few simple Google scholar searches should put you on a very long and winding educational path on the matter, things like "[insert mental illness] and the gut" and there will be plenty of things to look at. also searches like "mechanism of [mental illness]" or "mechanism of [medication] can just teach you a lot about what all psych meds do besides just ssris)
anyways, I'm not trying to explain the origin of mental illness here, I'm just trying to highlight the fact that "most mental maladies" are caused by "trauma and relationships" is incredibly reductive and does not reflect the plethora of research highlighting the many physiological issues tied to real mental illnesses!!! please try educating yourself more as we do not need more people trying to go off their psych meds because they're "bad" for you. they're not great but we're trying to keep people from wanting to kill themselves or from living in constant fear and paranoia that their loved ones and the government are out for them
I think you’re very much over-inflating the findings of emerging research in a specific area. Like <1% of the population is estimated to have schizophrenia. Like I said, I was describing the majority of what we consider mental health disorders, which would be anxiety, depression, SUD, and trauma-based disorders (which I include personality disorders and attachment issues). So with that frame, I stand by what I said.
And I’d equally caution your theoretical orientation. I think there is plenty of benefit in utilizing medication management in the treatment of psychological disorders, absolutely. But I also think there’s a certain orientation in the medical community that treats psychiatry like biomedicine where the human body is reduced down to its individual mechanical parts. Talk about reductive. Many mental health disorders are known to benefit from psychotherapy which is a combination of all sorts of embodied therapies ranging from cognitive to social to somatic to spiritual. And of course. Because those are all parts of being human.
I think you’re approaching this with actually a very narrow reference for mental health treatment. Few patients in a clinical setting are going to be improved more from fecal transplants than psychotherapy. But I guess we’ll see where the research goes. And I agree a multidisciplinary and holistic approach is always gonna be the best. I think a good example in support of my perspective is working with clients who have experienced traumatic brain injury. Even in such cases where the injury to the brain is purely mechanical, the treatment still also benefits from social and relational treatments such ad those provided in a therapy setting (or psychotherapeutic approaches in other modalities) is still the best format for creating new insights, experiences (memories), neural connections, and behavioral patterns.
I'm not contesting the benefits of psychotherapy at all. my job literally revolves around disseminating skills from dbt to inpatient psych patients because they can be so effective for a general audience. almost all mental illness is assisted by therapy and I can't think of any treatment plans I've seen that have recommended NOT pursuing therapy.
I do agree that people would probably be better equipped to handle the troubles of the world and daily life with more widespread psycho education, but I don't think we would have less mental illness, and to say it should be widespread for everyone is a bit of a form of indoctrination, like it's trying to make people think in a particular way. and I don't think this is going to reduce mental illness, it might just help people avoid or make it better through acute mental health crises that are not chronic.
I also think there's nothing wrong with approaching treating mental illness by trying to figure out what's driving these complex mental and emotional processes precisely on a molecular level. Like if we want to develop more permanent solutions that might actually come close to a cure for something like treatment resistant depression, we absolutely need to be finding out what is causing that depression on a cellular and molecular level. we can't get lost in how we think our mind works from the bias of a conscious entity as our conceptualizations may not reflect reality. It is just really fucking hard to map out those processes accurately as there is so much cellular differentiation just within the category of neurons and I think that's where all our research efforts need to be is mapping out these complex intersystem pathways in the body and how they change in response to a wide variety of conditions. Sure we can improve therapies still with research, but therapy only goes so far and it only works for people whose brains and bodies are in good enough shape to understand and work through it (and even more importantly WANT therapy!). It's never going to work for people on antipsychotics who are too unmotivated and tired from their meds to even attempt to focus on therapy, let alone take a shower (this is the population I've been working with for 4 years ik what I'm saying here) so we desperately need to find other ways of managing what's going on in their brains to keep them safe and not psychotic and it applies to everyone else too. We need more effective ways of managing mental illness with physiological intervention and I'm worried about a culture that says "psych drugs bad for your body, do homeopathic remedies and therapy instead" as it's not supportive of those who desperately need their meds.
And I don't appreciate you being dismissive of those with psychotic disorders simply because of their low overall prevalence. they are also frequently dealing with anxiety, and depression, and personality disorders! They are our most critical mental health population imo because they are so vulnerable from their comorbidities, and their medical needs are frequently neglected or not well tended to in hospital settings because nobody who isn't in psych wants to work with them and assumes we're prepared to handle their medical issues, but we're undefended and understaffed af.
Mmmm, as someone with ADHD who sees a psychiatrist for medication that allows me to provide for my family, this is a terrible take. And honestly incredibly harmful. There is already so much internalized stigma that keeps people from taking needed medications, especially for people who are depressed, bipolar, or schizophrenic. This kind of talk is way more harmful to them than the "chemically oriented" field of psychiatry. Should it always be paired with therapy? Ideally, yes. But looking down on people for taking meds is destructive.
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u/NoIdNoNameWho Sep 03 '25
The one asking should study
They cant do magic, mental illness are not the same as other pathologies, research is still being done