And can you articulate the history of psychiatry or can you tell me exactly what it’s getting wrong? How would you describe the origin of the problems it’s trying to address, and what would you say is the right way to solve them?
P.S. Saying ‘X is gay’ doesn’t count, like you did at the shitcoin/stablecoin/fuckedbypoliticians conference.
Sure.
Psychiatry, as we know it, emerged less as a science and more as a mechanism of social control. In the 19th century, it institutionalized the poor, the unwanted, and the socially disruptive. With no real understanding of the mind, early psychiatrists classified people based on vague moral or behavioral deviances. When psychoanalysis failed to deliver empirical rigor, psychiatry pivoted post-WWII to the “biological model,” which claimed without conclusive evidence that mental illness was the result of “chemical imbalances.”
That idea, by the way, is not just outdated it was never scientifically validated. The former head of NIMH, Dr. Thomas Insel, admitted the field spent $20 billion on brain research without improving outcomes for depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. In 2022, a major meta-analysis published in Molecular Psychiatry reviewed decades of studies and found no consistent evidence linking serotonin levels to depression. Yet SSRIs are prescribed to tens of millions as if this link were settled science.
So what is psychiatry getting wrong? Three main things:
1. It pathologizes normal responses to trauma and suffering. Bereavement, existential despair, economic precarity these are often labeled disorders requiring medication rather than understood as human experiences demanding meaning, community, and care.
2. It relies on symptom suppression, not root-cause resolution. Psychiatric drugs often blunt distress, but don’t heal it. Long-term use of antipsychotics, for example, has been correlated with worse functional outcomes and higher relapse rates, as found in studies like the WHO’s international schizophrenia outcomes project.
3. It treats individuals in isolation from their environments. But data from the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study shows that childhood trauma, neglect, and abuse strongly correlate with adult mental illness, addiction, and chronic disease. This is not a brain defect it’s a systemic failure.
What’s the right approach? One that views mental illness not as a defect to be fixed, but a signal to be understood. That requires:
• Trauma-informed therapy, not just prescriptions.
• Social reintegration—community, meaning, and purpose.
• Lifestyle and somatic interventions (sleep, nutrition, exercise) which outperform medication in many cases.
• Psychedelic-assisted therapy and other emerging modalities that address the root, not the symptom.
The problem isn’t that psychiatry is trying to reduce suffering it’s that it’s using tools that were designed to suppress, not heal. If the body keeps the score, psychiatry needs to learn how to read it.
And that shit is hella gay.
You’re partially right, but what you’re saying is misleading and oversimplified.
It is accurate, for instance, to say that psychiatry in the 19th century often functioned as a tool of social control. Historical records support the fact that individuals—particularly the poor, women, and those seen as socially disruptive—were frequently institutionalized more for being inconvenient than for any clear medical condition. In that era, classification systems were indeed vague, and diagnoses were often based on moral or behavioral judgments rather than scientific evidence.
The criticism of the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness is also valid. The notion that depression results from low serotonin levels has been widely discredited, or at least shown to lack compelling scientific evidence. This was confirmed by a 2022 meta-analysis published in Molecular Psychiatry, which found no consistent link between serotonin levels and depression. Although this idea was once promoted as established science, it never had strong empirical support. This reflects a larger issue in how psychiatric treatments are marketed and understood by the public, even when many clinicians themselves never fully subscribed to the chemical imbalance explanation.
Dr. Thomas Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, did publicly acknowledge that despite significant investments in brain-based research—about $20 billion worth—the field did not succeed in delivering improved real-world outcomes for major psychiatric disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. His reflections have fueled legitimate concerns that the biological model of psychiatry has been overemphasized at the expense of more holistic and effective interventions.
It correctly highlights the importance of trauma and environment in the development of mental illness. The findings from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study are robust and well-established, showing strong correlations between early trauma and later-life issues including mental illness, addiction, and even physical disease. This supports the call for a trauma-informed approach that considers individuals in the context of their lived experiences and social environments.
BUT
while many of these points are valid, the critique also veers into overgeneralization. For example, stating that psychiatry “emerged less as a science and more as social control” oversimplifies the historical evolution of the field. Although early psychiatry certainly had coercive elements, it also involved sincere scientific efforts to understand mental illness and improve care. Figures such as Emil Kraepelin laid foundational work for modern diagnostic systems that were more systematic than arbitrary.
Another overstatement is the claim that psychiatric medications are prescribed “as if the link [to serotonin] were settled science.” While this may have been truer in the past, most psychiatrists today recognize the complexity of mood disorders and do not rely on serotonin explanations alone. Moreover, SSRIs and other medications have demonstrated efficacy in many patients, even if their mechanisms are not fully understood. Suggesting that they are based on nothing but myth can be misleading, especially to those who genuinely benefit from them.
The critique that psychiatry focuses on symptom suppression rather than addressing root causes is partially true. The system is often oriented around short-term stabilization rather than long-term healing, a reality shaped as much by institutional and economic constraints as by medical ideology. Yet many practitioners are now integrating more holistic models that combine therapy, social support, and biological understanding. The field is not static, and to treat it as monolithic overlooks these important developments.
Finally, while lifestyle changes and somatic interventions—such as improved sleep, diet, exercise, and mindfulness practices—have been shown to be effective, especially in mild to moderate depression, they are not always sufficient on their own, particularly for severe mental illness. The claim that they “outperform medication in many cases” can be true in specific contexts, but should be stated with nuance to avoid creating false expectations.
Your rhetorical force comes at the cost of precision.
Psychiatry is neither a failed science nor a purely oppressive system—it is a complex and evolving field, with both flaws and vital contributions. A productive critique would acknowledge this duality, pushing for reform without discarding what still works.
We gonna both just use ChatGPT to argue with each other? lol 😂
I was thinking the same thing! This stuff is even stealing the fun of arguing with strangers on the internet 🤣 but at least we can be precise about it lol.
Soon we’ll be watching computers passionately fighting over prompts we gave them… with a smug look on our faces.
The robots are taking over bro
👀
Imagine if you had a rock in your shoe and a doctor wanted to give you medicine to numb your foot so you could ignore the rock rather than helping you take off your shoe and remove the rock. 👀
Yes.
'It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Krishnamurti
Psychiatric pills disconnect us from the reality. They are tools primarily oriented towards maintaining the status quo, which is basically a prison without bars.
I spent around four years (and counting) creating a lecture series in an attempt to lay out what I've found to be the best approach to escaping the prison; specifically addressing the responsible use of psychedelics.
Searching for Holotropic Renaissance on any podcasting app should bring it up for anyone who's curious. Also here sourcenode.xyz
Language itself is the first LLM we prompt with and in.
