One factor it also depends on is what kind of treatment one is attempting to do—curing vs palliative care. If someone has a serious mental health problem, then presumably there is some persistent difference(s) between them and other people, generating that problem.
(Even if the generation only happens in a liability sense, e.g. someone might have a temprary psychotic episode. The episode itself is not a persistent difference, but most people never have psychotic episodes at all. So the fact that someone does sometimes and that those who do sometimes can get then repeatedly suggests that they have some underlying thought disorder that makes them vulnerable to it.)
If you want to cure the problems, then your best bet is to treat the underlying difference, or at least have a treatment specialized to it so you’re sure you get rid of all of the effects. But if you just want to perform palliative care, reducing the harm of symptoms while being unable to fully get rid of them, then focusing on what the symptoms are is a good bet.
It seems to me that a lot of psychiatry is essentially palliative.
(FWIW your comment seems helpful to me, and in general LW voting seems noisy in general as a signal of value, like often helpful things are ignored or downvoted and low-value things are heavily upvoted.)
One factor it also depends on is what kind of treatment one is attempting to do—curing vs palliative care. If someone has a serious mental health problem, then presumably there is some persistent difference(s) between them and other people, generating that problem.
(Even if the generation only happens in a liability sense, e.g. someone might have a temprary psychotic episode. The episode itself is not a persistent difference, but most people never have psychotic episodes at all. So the fact that someone does sometimes and that those who do sometimes can get then repeatedly suggests that they have some underlying thought disorder that makes them vulnerable to it.)
If you want to cure the problems, then your best bet is to treat the underlying difference, or at least have a treatment specialized to it so you’re sure you get rid of all of the effects. But if you just want to perform palliative care, reducing the harm of symptoms while being unable to fully get rid of them, then focusing on what the symptoms are is a good bet.
It seems to me that a lot of psychiatry is essentially palliative.
Not sure why I got downvoted? :(
(FWIW your comment seems helpful to me, and in general LW voting seems noisy in general as a signal of value, like often helpful things are ignored or downvoted and low-value things are heavily upvoted.)
Oh it seems to be back up, when I posted it I was at −5, I thought I had done something very wrong.