Would you say that treating manic/depression with lithium is a "pseudo-science"?
BTW: Where did you learn that psychiatry is a "pseudo-science"?
Here is what typically happens. A patient comes to the shrink. The shrink asks some questions and then looks in the DSM manual. If the patient fits the symtoms described in the manual for a "disease" called manic-depression (one of these, btw, is denial of having manic depression!), he gets drugs....err "medicine". No real doctor treats his patients solely on the basis of symptoms but shrinks do it 100 percent of the time. Of course, the list of official diseases is changing all the time, often for political reasons. The best known example of homosexuality once considered an official dsm.
Let me also give you two personal experiences. I had two friends who were diagnosed for severe manic-depression by highly regarded shrinks. They were told that they would have be on drugs....er "medicine" for the rest of their lives. I met one and he was absolutely ardent on this, good "scientist" that he was.
Both of these friends had improvements in their lives and went of the drugs. Fifteen years later, both are drug free and doing fine. In then end, the shrink claim that they had to be lifelong dependents was proven nonsense. What kind of "science" is that?
Now....I know what you are going to say. You are going to say that all doctors make mistakes but I can assure you that both of these friends truly enganged in scary behavor which was apparently quite genuine including, in one case, multiple personalities. I doubt that any shrink would have acted otherwise.
As I said, I have no problem with drugs. They can make people feel happier and more relaxed.....just like I do when use such drugs as beer or caffeine to change moods. Just don't pretend they are medicine. Let's at least be honest.
: http://www.theszaszblog.blogspot.com/