There\’s a reason psychiatrists prescribe drugs rather than talking therapy: the latter makes no money for pharmaceutical firms
And of course there\’s no tu quoque possible here at all:
Harriet Fraad is a practising psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in New York City. She has been in private practice for 37 years and seen hundreds of people thrive without psychopharmacology.
Even if we acept the argument that pill popping is all about profits for those who manufacture the pills being popped, spomeone who sells talk therapy is subject to exactly the same possible criticism, no?
Erm, okay. I can accept the Bastiat link with her and talking therapy. What I’m finding hard to accept as fact is her link between the profits of the drug companies to the supposedly unethical prescribing habits of individual doctors.
There may be pharma-weasels at the little chat sessions they organise but I doubt even “Big Pharma” have bugs in the treatment rooms to check that an influenced (not paid) doctor, or even a bunged shill, is actually prescribing the right number of doses of pharmaceutical heaven.
Most people wouldn’t get to see a psychiatrist anyway, as there aren’t enough of ’em(in the UK at any rate) and they’re not keen on nutters–unless said nutter has lots of money. Most drug perscriptions are written by GP’s.
Unlikely to be too many harmful side-effects from talking tho …
Alan Douglas
@Surreptitious Evil,
Indeed, there is no real evidence that doctors are in league with Big Evil Pharma, but they are at least indifferent to the cost of the treatment they provide. At best (depending on your political colours) the cost is borne by the patient, at worst by the taxpayer, who despite bulk purchasing power seems notoriously bad at driving a decent bargain with the pharmas. So far from this being due to covert corruption between pharma salesmen and the government bureaucrats doing the buying I believe that there is actually “no discount” legislation in the USA preventing the state-funded healthcare system from exercising its market power.
So, as far as the doc is concerned, why provide a cheap treatment when an expensive one will do? Not to mention the famous observation that in psychiatry at least, the chance of cure is proportional to how much you pay for it.
Declaration of interest: JamesV works for Big Evil Pharma.
Drugs work. We know this because they have to pass clinical trials. Talking cures do not have to pass such trials. But when they are tested in similar circumstances, they fail.
We have no evidence that any talking cure except perhaps CBT works.
Don’t even ask me what I think of the chances of hypnotherapy working are.
So it would seem drugs win hands down. The real question is why are we, or any one person, continuing to piss money away on frauds?
Or even, er, ‘te qouque’…
Sorry…
Sh*te!
I meant to write ‘te quoque!”