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851 points swyx | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.42s | source
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nickjj ◴[] No.25826835[source]
That was a fun read. I wish the author mentioned how much he was trying to sell the service for. It could have been $59 a month or $599 a month and with doctors you could potentially expect the same answer.

I'm not a psychologist but some of the author's quoted text came off extremely demeaning in written form. If the author happens to read this, did you really say those things directly to them?

For example, Susan (psychologist) was quoted as saying:

> "Oh sure! I mean, I think in many cases I'll just prescribe what I normally do, since I'm comfortable with it. But you know it's possible that sometimes I'll prescribe something different, based on your metastudies."

To which you replied:

> "And that isn't worth something? Prescribing better treatments?"

Imagine walking into the office of someone who spent the last ~10 years at school and then potentially 20 years practicing their craft as a successful psychologist and then you waltz in and tell them what they prescribe is wrong and your automated treatment plan is better.

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dan-robertson ◴[] No.25827042[source]
The conversations are surely paraphrased and exaggerated—just look at the style of the rest of the article.

The position that doctors should be trying new things to improve their care sounds good but in practice most doctors are strongly biased towards the status quo and usually inaction is preferred to a slightly unknown action, even if that action has better expectancy.

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loceng ◴[] No.25827565[source]
Psychiatrists are simply experimenting on each person they prescribe medications to. The status quo is indoctrination, and in this case, the psychiatrist wasn't even willing to use actual research based data to improve the treatment of their patients - even referencing that they won't make anymore money because the patient won't come back more often or refer more patients because of it. This is abhorrent unprofessional behaviour - but it's likely the attitude of 90%+ of the field.

Edit to add: if you think a practitioner putting their own revenue/profits above providing quality care, then something's wrong with you.

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1. wolco5 ◴[] No.25828826[source]
I've seen this happen and the entire process of adding new drugs and waiting a week or more between visits seems cruel.
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2. cestith ◴[] No.25834203[source]
Lots of psychoactive medications take days or weeks to build up in the body to the point of effectiveness. They're finding out neat things about esketamine and psilocybin, but in general a large enough dose of a mood-altering drug to take immediate effect is a bad or at least very risky thing.