It is the validity of the 'medical diagnosis' that is at question. Psychopathology simply requires a sound causal hypothesis BEFORE a disease is diagnosed and BEFORE a medical treatment is applied. How else can be known what is being done and whether someone is 'medically cured'?
Psychopathology is based on causality and requires determinism to be true for its validity.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychiatry/If psychiatry is really (really?) a branch of medicine, we should see the specific causal hypotheses emerge about mechanisms that cause the symptoms of mental illness. Psychopathology is to be identified as the departure of a psychological system from its proper state.
Feeling helped is not a justification for medical treatment otherwise paranormal therapy would equally qualify. There are thousands of people who truly 'feel helped' with paranormal therapy to cure cancer. That doesn't make it a scientifically valid practice.
It may be important to question the validity of the theorethical fundament on the basis of which psychiatry is able to diagnose medical diseases.
There are indications that medical psychiatry is actively suppressing alternatives such as psychotherapies that may provide much better results.
Schizophrenia patients denied talking therapies
Thousands of people with mental health problems are being denied the best and most effective treatments, years after they were approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, according to experts. Proven talking therapies are not offered to people diagnosed with schizophrenia.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 21713.html
The argument that people 'feel helped' as justification for medical treatment is based on a promise that psychiatry will one day be able to prove that a valid causal hypothesis for psychological problems is possible. Until today, after 70+ years trying, their promise has remained empty.
When psychiatry would have a sound causal hypothesis, which is required to diagnose a medical disease, there could be no dispute about the applicability of medical treatment.
In studies with an active placebo (a pill with a side effect that provides the feeling that something 'happens' in the body), 100% of people with a severe clinical depression can recover just as well with a fake pill. Those people feel helped with a fake pill, but when it concerns the interest of humanity, it may be important that humans learn to make use of that potential in a proper way (with their mind).
The brain may be compared with a music instrument. When a trumpet musician would play false notes, would it be sensical from the perspective of music to punch dents in the trumpet to change the sound of the notes? One could argue that the music player will need to learn to play pure notes, and that it should be demanded on behalf of music.
When the brain can 're-wire itself' to such an extent that a man with merely 10% brain tissue can live a healthy life with wife, children and a job, and when studies have shown that when people are made artificially blind, that the part that is correlated with eye-sight would be 're-wired' to do completely different things, then, at question would be: why can the brain re-wire itself?
Consciousness without a brain?
"Any theory of consciousness has to be able to explain why a person like that, who's missing 90 percent of his neurons, still exhibits normal behaviour," Axel Cleeremans, a professor philosophy of cognitive science from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=16742
Most likely, the re-wiring has nothing to do with the brain itself, as if pre-programmed to do so. (the 10% brain tissue case is an example that would make it highly unlikely that the brain contains a pre-programmed solution for such a situation).
Mind over matter is most likely the reality. There is evidence for that, also for example with regard genetics.
Learning one’s genetic risk changes physiology independent of actual genetic risk
In an interesting twist to the enduring nature vs. nurture debate, a new study from Stanford University finds that just thinking you’re prone to a given outcome may trump both nature and nurture. In fact, simply believing a physical reality about yourself can actually nudge the body in that direction—sometimes even more than actually being prone to the reality.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562- ... -behaviour
I do not agree that it is so easy to get away with the application of medical treatment without a valid causal hypothesis. Psychiatry has already been provided with a considerable chance to prove its ideas, for +70 years, without results.Gertie wrote: ↑June 28th, 2021, 6:54 amWe can acknowledge all the problems without throwing the useful baby out with the crappy bathwater. And millions have found psychiatry helpful, some life saving. Look at areas where we don't have medical treatment like Alzheimers, it's tragic. If we had a pill which could help, we should give people that choice.
Evidence is the cited study in the OP:
(2019) Psychiatric diagnosis 'scientifically meaningless'
Clinical psychology professor John Read, University of East London, said: "Perhaps it is time we stopped pretending that medical-sounding labels contribute anything to our understanding of the complex causes of human distress or of what kind of help we need when distressed."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 131152.htm
'medical sounding' labels do not justify 'medical treatment'.
Psychiatry is practicing medicine based on a promise that its underlying theory will some day be proven valid.
Psychopathology - the idea that mental states correlate with brain states - requires determinism to be true for its validity. If you believe that mind is merely brain states, then you simply must adhere to a belief in determinism.
Based on current knowledge it can be said that a belief in determinism is questionable. Thus, psychiatry's ability to some day meet its promise may be considered unlikely from some perspectives.