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539 points drankl | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.292s | source
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hresvelgr ◴[] No.44485587[source]
The lovable aphorisms we had for people with character quirks were largely from our original support systems. What no one is talking about is the reason therapy-talk has become so pervasive is because all those support systems: family, friends, and local communities (religious or otherwise), have all degraded so severely for most that therapy is the only option for reaching out and getting help.
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Paracompact ◴[] No.44486061[source]
I agree, though possibly for different reasons. Those support systems may or may not be weaker than they were in generations past, but they are certainly more likely to say "I can't help you, go get professional help" than in the past.

In some ways this is a good thing. It is good if bipolar people get the medication they need faster, and can start living their best lives. But as someone who almost died to depression, the "help" out there is criminal. It is not a disease we have a cure for, in fact it's not clear to me it's even a disease in most sufferers, but a healthy and rational response to societal decay. I do not believe some disorders will ever be satisfactorily explained by individual-centric medicine, in the same way history will never be satisfactorily explained by great man theory.

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1. spicyusername ◴[] No.44499853[source]
One thing that makes me nervous about a culture that is so quick to forward people to therapists, is that therapy is not some ironclad medical practice, like you might imagine heart surgery to be.

Therapy, and psychology in general, is one of the weakest areas of science, still based mostly on mysticism, large personalities, and weak statistical correlations. And that is assuming you even can get a "good" therapist, and not some schmuck who just happened to nab the degree.

I would go so far as to say that 90%+ of problems that are served in therapy sessions are better served by the regular participants in an intimate social network, friends and family, than some "expert" who is incentivized, knowingly or not, to send you into the pharmaceutical pipeline or, as this article describes, hand you a bunch of random labels you can forever use to psychologically handicap yourself with.