Because it's self evident when you are dealing with something that is intangible that there will be less conclusive understanding than another area of medicine where everything is physical.
Mental health is not intangible. You really are quite the positivist if you think that We'd be pretty screwed if we just left our observations to the directly observable ... you'd never get pain relief for a start.
Again, there are lots of areas of psychiatry that are backed up well by science. I understand how brain scans can be used to determine emotions in animals for example, I know there is physical evidence in many areas of study.
And are specifically up to date in this particular area because if you are I am sure we can have a nice chat about orbitofrontal and amygdala underactivity because I don't have many people to talk to about it ...
But ultimately the bits that aren't physical and can't be traced by studying something tangible can only by definition come down to opinion, and this is something that just doesn't exist in other fields of medicine.
Except they are physical and you protestations to the otherwise just makes you look rather daft.
Again you keep trying to make this an all or nothing debate, I've never said the whole field of psychiatry is "all about" Frued an mind/body duality. I've said that many areas of the field are well backed up by scientific evidence.
Yes, and strangely enough this is one of them.
But when we're analysing whether someone is likely to kills themselves or not physical evidence goes out the window and you are left only with one person's assessment based on nothing more than historical data.
No we are not. We are left with a known list of diagnostic criteria that are met to categorise the person into the relevant group. We then plug that group into the overall suicide rates and come out with a broad assessment of risk. This is exactly what they did.
Which is what I essentially said? They look at people with X (varying criteria) and see historically how many of them committing suicide then apply this as a figure onto the individual (Now obviously the whole process is a little longer and convoluted than that but that's what it is essentially).
That's not what you said though is it - you said this: "X amount of people have threatened to commit suicide before if Y was to occur, Z amount of people carried out that threat?"
Which is of course a very different thing.
The point is they are basing it on the experiences and actions of other people, which again is very logical and correct most of the time but it isn't infallible and certainly isn't enough to shout another poster down for disagreeing with that conclusion.
If that post had challenged the position with a degree of evidence or actual thought then maybe not when they dismiss leading authorities in an area they, like you, clearly do not understand all because they have a 'gut instinct' then yes I will repeatedly challenge them.
Well they are aren't they? Show me a ruler than can measure anger, or a thermometer than can measure depression, you can't because those two things don't physically exist, you can only measure them on a man-made scale based on historical data of other people who claimed to be in the same position.
Well a ruler is an implement for measuring length ...
A thermometer is an implement for measuring temperature ...
Show me an implement that can measure renal failure ... you can't but you could show me creatinine and urea levels along with a GFR that would indicate it and from that we could form a conclusion.
Show me an implement that can measure epilepsy ... you can't but you could perform a sleep study with video EEG and nursing observations and from that you could form a conclusion.
Show me an implement that can measure depression ... you can't but you can perform biochemistry, run a fMRI and gain nursing observations and from that form a conclusion.
And you believe you accurately read minds which is just asinine.
No one is saying they can in this case
