Before I begin, I'd like to point out I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know everything (or even all that much) about psychiatry, and I don't know what's best for everyone. I've been involved with psychiatry as a patient for some of my life, and I've done a little reading on the subject and have taken a few undergrad classes. I'm not an expert. But I do my best to provide sound information.
The neat part of mental issues is that its all in your head, literally imaginary
Mental issues aren't always just a way of thinking. Sometimes there's something physically wrong with a person's brain leading to mental health issues. Depression is often caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals (or perhaps the imbalance is a factor or appears as a common symptom, we don't know exactly).
Some people (Do check out Phineas Gage's story, it's an amazing bit of history) have mental issues because of physical brain damage that can (sometimes) be worked around or mitigated via therapy (Probably not in Phineas' case, though). Everything you do or see is experienced through your interpretation of your senses. Did you know that people with depression pretty consistently
report the world as being less colorful, even though their eyes still have identical function? What's inside your head is all of your "self", so if mental issues are imaginary then so is the self so why do anything?
Go tell "it's all in your head don't worry about it" to people that have
PTSD and see where that gets you. Just because their trauma is in their heads doesn't mean they don't suffer from it. I'm sure all of the Vietnam vets would really love to have been told "Just feel better." and then magically felt better. The therapy is there to try and get the torture and bombs and horrible imagery out of their head.
And above all, "In your head" is all
anything is. So why do you care if other people treat their imaginary problems in their head? If everyone is treats their imaginary problems and then they become imaginary happier, isn't that fine?
The only people psychology works on are extrinsically motivated easily manipulated mindless cattle
So you've never felt bad as a kid because someone called you a name? Or you never felt better because someone cheered you up with something happy? Or ever have a spouse or a friend or a relative be with you when you're down, angry, or upset and make you feel better just by being there or listening to you vent? Or you've never been bummed out because of a freak accident, or been made happy by a pleasant surprise?
If you've done any of that, you've been emotionally manipulated and I'm afraid you're "easily manipulated mindless cattle".
...No, actually, you're just a human. Like super manly man
Dwayne Johnson. All humans have emotions and thoughts and feelings, and they can be affected by others' actions, or random events. The stoic "I'm so cool I have no emotions and nothing can change me" outlook is both impossible to attain and actively harmful to those who try for it. And even if you attain it, all it really means is you're cutting off everyone you know from affecting you, which I feel is quite lonely. Being emotional is part of what makes people human, and with it, so is being hurt or being healed because of those emotions.
And besides, the people who truly think "I can't be influenced by anything" are prime targets of those who actually want to manipulate. Like advertisers, who spend millions of dollars yearly hiring psych consultants to help convince people to buy products. I took a psychology class where the lecturer was a former psych consultant for advertisers, and he plainly said "Those who think they aren't being influenced at all, are often the ones being influenced the most and the easiest to make think an idea was their own. The best way you avoid being influenced, is to be aware that you're being influenced from the start, and examine why the influence makes you feel a certain way." I'm paraphrasing, because it was years ago, but it's something that stuck with me. He was a funny guy, and proudly admitted he loved a certain soda brand even though he knew he was influenced to like it. But he was okay with it, because it didn't hurt him and he got enjoyment out of it.
Honestly this previous bit is only an anecdote, but I believe you need to be aware that you can be manipulated before you can identify if you're actually being manipulated.
Even if psychology works only on "extrinsically motivated easily manipulated mindless cattle" then it isn't a scam by definition because, by your words, it works. So why would it be a bad thing, then? Get those "extrinsically motivated easily manipulated mindless cattle" all the psych therapy and meds they need to be happy with their lives.
The kind of person that gets emotionally hurt over anonymous messages on the internet, completely incapable of differentiating reality and compartmentalizing
So these people arent just sick in the head but also potentially dangerous
If you're talking about me, let me be clear (and I should have been more clear earlier) that I think it was insulting specifically to the doctors working to help people. You didn't attack me personally, but I think your attack on the entirety of psychology was irresponsible and could hurt someone by way of them not seeking help for their mental health, which is what I'm aiming to correct.
So, if it's all in their heads, why are they potentially dangerous for it? Is it because human's mental health has an affect on the way they perceive the world, and might not be able to be changed without outside help? So what should be done to help them, then? Should we just let them be "potentially dangerous" or should we provide mental health care to them the best we can?
And you never answered what should be done instead of psychology-based methods. I'll ask you again: Instead of psych counseling and possible medical treatment, what should we do to help people with depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar, and other mental health issues?
Also psychology is literally just sugar pill placebo for the brain, none of it has any biologically quantifiable factual basis, just trying shit in hopes it works 🤷♂️
Yes, it mostly can't be researched directly as a "does x cause y" because that breaks research ethics laws that were established
for a good reason. But studies looking at trends can still be done. There are a bunch of
general different
methods to help people process trauma or improve themselves, and there are
long-term studies done on their effects on patients and the methods' effectiveness. No, they aren't perfect, just like there isn't one set of hamburger toppings that'll please everyone.
"Just trying shit in hopes it works" isn't entirely wrong, but you're missing the point. They aren't starting from zero like the early psychologists did, there's prior research that's been done, and that's used as a basis to further generate hypothesis for study. Psychiatrists make hypothesis, do research, and draw conclusions, following the scientific method like other scientists. Do you trust an elevator to work? Or cars? Or packaged food? Because those are also the end result of "trying shit" in a controlled way. Without materials, fuel, electrical, and aeronautical sciences we wouldn't have gone from the Wright Brothers crashing giant paper monstrosities to launching
metal tubes through the sky full of people and cargo and doing it safely. Psychology follows the
same basic scientific method that eventually got us to aerial metal people tubes. I'm not saying "blindly trust the process," because you shouldn't ever blindly trust anything, but you should know that in general there's a process that's being followed and it's relatively rigorous.
For the "biologically quantifiable factual basis" part, it's out there, but for obvious ethical reasons you can't just modify brain chemicals and observe reactions. For one example, check out this research on
smiling signaling your brain to be happy. They did quantifiable research there by using an fMRI machine. It doesn't tell us much, other than parts of the emotion centers in the brain activated more often when different facial muscles were activated, but research like this might help instruct psychological therapy methods in the future.
The closest we have ever gotten to functional mental health care was when germany tried just having people live a frugal life and touch some plants, that went down with WW2 though
You've touched upon
a subject of psychological study. Greenspace, and nature as a whole, is a known influence in the study of human psychology. Studies are still done in this direction, I don't know why you think it ended with WWII. I believe there's been discussions to incorporate more greenspace in city building plans because of this thread of research, but obviously the already built areas of cities won't see the improvements without doing major reconstruction.
The other half of that, frugality, might be fine, but going too far and living in poverty
isn't something that improves mental health. Poverty and low-income are both well-documented as extreme stressors, so you'd need to tread a line of "frugality" carefully. In fact,
this study claims frugality is, ironically, expensive. It's an interesting subject, though, and there are studies out there that are still looking into it.
and now we have scam councillors
You haven't supported your belief that they're scams. You claim their methods "[work on] extrinsically motivated easily manipulated mindless cattle." So which is it, do they work or don't they? What exactly is their scam?
and pills that turn you braindead
If you live in the US, UK, or Canada, and likely in most countries with established mental health care, you probably interact daily with a bunch of people who're on antidepressants, stimulants, anti-anxiety meds, and a whole host of others. This
data brief by the CDC says ~11% of people in the USA are on an antidepressant in 2023, and this is just ONE type of psych medication.
They don't turn you brain dead. People would notice. In fact, some of the most abused psych drugs are
stimulants like Adderall taken by students in an attempt to improve grades.
So yeah. I don't think psychology is a scam. We're still learning so much about humans, the brain, and body that, yeah no shit, we're still in a phase where there's so much more to learn and some of our current practices might be considered ineffective, or maybe harmful, in the future. But we can apply what we do know, and attempt to make things better. And saying "It's all fake you don't actually know it's all a scam" is disingenuous, when we can improve some lives right now, and hopefully improve more lives later.