Great job Hive account@agmoore. Your posts are always so detailed. I would think with this subject, it was kind of hard to stay on just the topics you brought up here. There is so much about psychology and mental health care that is used, misused and still unknown. What works for one may not work for another.

The one thing that still baffles me. Is I know in some cases, like mine, the medicine helps. Yet no blood work or testing has ever been done to check on my serotonin or dopamine levels. I have recently learned about psychologists using MRI and CT scans to try to evaluate patients. In fact, EMDR treatment in itself is very simplistic, yet a CT scan is supposed to be done on a regular basis to see if the treatment is working. I have yet to have one. Not that I could afford any of this, yet I can't help but think if proper tools were used how much of a difference would it make?

For a long time mental health has been an industry rather than a treatment or cure. Big Pharma basically grew out of mental health care (it had a hand in other areas, but the medications for mental illness have been one of the top products they sell). As you mention the practices have always been symptom based. Numb it, dull it anything to stop the 'negative' behavior. It is still very common today.

Talk therapy alone doesn't do the job either. If you get a therapist that is Freudian based, then they blame everything wrong with you on one or the other parent. Sometimes they even manage to convince the person being treated something actually happened to cause this. I even had one therapist tell me I needed to sever ties with my entire family since I can't remember half of my childhood.

I have done so much research over the years, like you mentioned also, that each doctor would have their own diagnosis. That still happens. If I listen to everything I have been 'diagnosed' with. I should be locked up.

I've rambled on enough. It's a great topic especially for open discussion. To share experiences. Learning more of how things came to be is still extremely fascinating. If you're going to keep on with the mental health articles like this, I would love to see you do an article on Nellie Bly and maybe something on Waverly Hills. I've done a some research, not a lot. Both very fascinating.