Medicine does pretty well with popping my friend out of her psychotic states. But people on the traditional treatment programs never truly get better, they're just on the treatment merry-go-round for decades.

"The Doctor Isn't In" succinctly describes Psychiatry's big problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10315705

The problem with Psychiatry is that it treats symptoms, not causes. The hope represented by this article is that by catching symptoms earlier, or by better pinpointing linguistic markers, vulnerable patients can be treated earlier with more-appropriate medications.

I think that it is much more important to find causes behind "mental disorders" than to describe them better.

From the article:

> According to Schwoebel, it took over 10 primary-care appointments before his brother was referred to a psychiatrist and eventually received a diagnosis. After that, he was put on one medication that didn’t work for him, and then another. In the years it took to get Schwoebel’s brother diagnosed and on an effective regimen, he experienced three psychotic breaks. For cases that call for medication, this led Schwoebel to wonder how to get a person on the right prescription, and at the right dose, faster.

What are the conditions that led this person to have a psychotic break? They didn't care, and just put Mr. Schwoebel's brother on maintenance medication for life. I suspect that such patients are usually 'exhausted' [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12331317 (my comment from this past weekend)

"How Psychiatry Lost Its Way: Identifying new mental disorders and their "curse" had become a productive industry; it is also bad medicine" [2], by Paul McHugh M.D., is very helpful for giving context to the mental health industry's status quo.

[2] https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/how-psychiatry-l...

"The Doctor Isn't In" (same author) is also quite helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10315705