Does any field in medicine have better hours than EM?

[kjamess]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Psychiatry is not only unsexy but intellectually insolvent.

Up until the 1980s, the field was beholden to Sigmund Freud. Enough said.

There is no convincing evidence that depression is biologically caused, as opposed to unhappiness due to life circumstance, in the context of poor coping skills.

There is no convincing evidence that schizophrenia is a real disease as opposed to some conglomerate of being stupid (neg sx) and being weird (pos sx).

Antidepressants are no better than placebo for mild depression, and are only better than placebo for severe depression because placebo stops working for severe depression.

The field is beholden to the pharmaceutical industry (ie, prescribing the brand name enantionmerically pure form of an SSRI (Lexapro) for 10x markup instead of the generic (Celexa) -- with no evidence the former is more efficacious).

The only thing that really works in the entire field is ECT, which if you have ever seen performed against a patient's will is one of the most barbaric acts in modern medicine. Plus not a single psychiatrist can tell you with confidence why it works.

Those are the main reasons to not go into psychiatry. It's just my opinion, don't take it personally.

you are one dumb bunny

 

[peppy]

Science is a process, and the brain is the most complex thing on the planet. You critique a field working to understand that which is hard to understand. You appear fairly concrete, only satisfied once science has completed something, rather than recognizing the steps along the way to that improvement. By that logic nothing is worth pursuing, since inherently it hasn't produced the desired outcome before it has. No science should be done if it won't lead to improvements, but the nature of science is that one doesn't know the outcome before the research is performed. You display a pessimism as if No progress has been made. If you think you can do better, then put up. Or shut up.

Well said. Ridiculing psychiatry because of Freud and ECT is like ridiculing cardiology as a specialty because back in the 1950s our understanding of cardiovascular disease was quite primitive. We don't at this point understand everything about the brain, but we are getting closer and definitely can improve quality of life for many people.

I think the lifestyle in psych is great and the work is a lot of fun. However, I think it really is for the best if people who are ONLY concerned about an easy lifestyle do not go into psych, so I am not going to try all that hard to convince people to go into it.

 

[toxicwombat]

The lack of blood tests for diagnoses is a common critique, but also what makes us actually have to use our skills of observation and critical thinking, rather than relying on labs and technology to do the work for us. An intelligent critical thinker can be an outstanding psychiatrist, but commonly contemporary psychiatric reductionism and purely symptom focus with pharmacology means many people can skate by as crappy psychiatrists. It's too bad you saw the poor side of the field. I don't feel a need to validate the field to you. If you actually read the science (rather than outright dismissing the field itself) you'd see that the research itself is moving the field forward. But maybe it's easier to continue living in the peanut gallery, pursuing a field like radiology, rather than working with those that might actually benefit from your care. Science is a process, and the brain is the most complex thing on the planet. You critique a field working to understand that which is hard to understand. You appear fairly concrete, only satisfied once science has completed something, rather than recognizing the steps along the way to that improvement. By that logic nothing is worth pursuing, since inherently it hasn't produced the desired outcome before it has. No science should be done if it won't lead to improvements, but the nature of science is that one doesn't know the outcome before the research is performed. You display a pessimism as if No progress has been made. If you think you can do better, then put up. Or shut up.

One of the best posts I've read on here in months. Well said, sir.