Although there is a diversity of political opinions, personal relationships tend to bring like-minded people together. Those with higher education, for example, spend more time talking to those who do. And in this niche, among atheists and Catholics, there are few people willing to defend the belief in miracle workers. They can even order their mandingas, but they won’t brag about it lest they come across as an incense Zen aunt or an illiterate neo-Pentecostal. So, although I am skeptical, I have little opportunity to shake my skepticism about supernatural events. And all it took was someone trying to convince me of the magical healing powers of a non-Western cleric for me to see that everything was in order with my skepticism.

I hear this kind of very emphatic report saying that I did not see the things that he saw, and that he was cured of an incurable disease, for which the doctors gave no hope. I take it that the healer certainly believes in the powers of the healer. Since the disease no longer manifests, I deduce that the disease must have an emotional background: the healer shook his head, which caused the disease to cease to manifest.

I go to the search engine and here it is: the disease, psoriasis, has no well-determined cause – genetics, diet, etc. – but it is triggered by depression and distress.

For some reason For some lesser known reason, some people’s skin breaks down into patterned sores when they are depressed or distressed. As these people become all dirty and seem to have something contagious, it makes them more depressed and anxious, which causes the wounds to burst, thus becoming more depressed and anxious, and… In the case of a person who was not skeptic like me, a healer moved my head and solved the problem.

428617523What would the skeptic do?

Once it was established that the problem was in the head, what would someone like me, who doesn’t believe in supernatural authorities, do in my place? These people tend to seek out the available scientific knowledge to think about the question and solve it. For a long time, the norm has been that depression is a problem that can be solved with medication – although it is still said, by word of mouth, that the help of a psychologist is essential.

(Of course, because in practice, psychologists are used to send people to the psychiatrist, who transmits medicine. And as this practice spreads, patients try on their own to obtain legal drugs with the least amount of money. possible intermediates. See the case of Ritalin and sleep pills.)

Very well: before the pandemic, a skeptic would have little reason to apply his skepticism to so-called Science, which is in fact a body of academics engaged in the pharmaceutical industry which funds them. Before the pandemic, it is possible that the skeptic who wanted to cure his psoriasis followed the protocol of going to the psychologist, who would then send him to the psychiatrist, who would then give him an antidepressant. This antidepressant would probably be fluoxetine, a popular antidepressant. The skeptic would read the package insert and find that loss of libido is one of the side effects. We can suppose that an individual deprived of libido becomes depressed, and, once depressed, is led to take more drugs which take away the libido, and, without libido, depresses, and… Well, there is an analogous situation to that of psoriasis, but entirely drug-induced.

Brazil is not good at producing data. When they do, they are often deliberately distorted by ideologues – like those in the IGBE, who have decided that pardos are black. So, I’m left to use my own experience and that of others to try to tell what reality looks like.

For my part, I have noticed that those who are my age and under and who are middle class have grown up going to a psychologist, and from there they go to a psychiatrist and receive a diagnosis. (I already told you I escaped!) They speak with a natural exchange of psychiatric drugs that leaves me speechless.

A friend older than me with a degree in psychology has had a habit of flirting with middle-class women in their early twenties for years. As he tells me, it is normal for them and their classmates to take antidepressants since the age of fifteen. And they don’t masturbate. Maybe all those feminists who do federal crab pots have been chemically castrated since adolescence, and that’s why they’re so obsessed with sexual pleasure. (What normal person comes to college needing a class to learn how to masturbate?)

Credulos of remedies

If Brazil doesn’t measure things correctly, the UK does. According to Eli Vieira in this article, “one in six British adults takes or has taken antidepressants” in 900 and 768. Could this scenario not be linked to the fall in the birth rate in Europe?

) Anyway, I bring Eli’s article because, just as I found someone who told me that witchcraft cures psoriasis, there will certainly be people who will say that they took antidepressants and they were cured of depression. And since depression, like psoriasis, is a matter of the mind, the question arises: what if taking the drug while believing in its effectiveness was not enough to treat yourself? There are those who trust the healer and there are those who trust the doctor. If the first heals, we speak of “strength of faith”; if the second heals, you have to wonder if it was not the famous placebo effect.

According to Eli, the studies on which the approval of antidepressants is based consist precisely of comparisons between the effects of the placebo and those of the drug. These studies may be of higher or lower quality. I quote Eli: “Horowitz and Wilcock point out that much of the evidence in favor of the two classes of antidepressants most commonly used today comes from placebo-controlled studies that lasted between six and weeks. In one of the few longer-term studies, involving more than 4,000 patients over a year, only 2.7% improved. There are dissenting voices among experts, but a general picture, according to the authors, is that current antidepressants alone are not enough to treat the disease. Cochrane, which publishes rigorous reviews of medical treatments, even questioned whether antidepressants were worth prescribing, given that some of them even increase the risk of suicide compared to placebo. The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) assessment is more optimistic, but the authors of the new review cast doubt on the entity’s methods.

Antidepressants, unlike witchcraft, have side effects. It is therefore perfectly plausible that they are worse than the placebo. But while it’s true that antidepressants create the harm they fight, it’s also true that the companies have a good excuse to bribe government regulatory agencies. They will sell salt water to a perpetual number of thirsty people.

428617523 Academic Research Directions

The placebo effect itself never ceases to be interesting in itself; after all, it shows that there are physical problems for which the solution is not medicated. The impact of the mind on physical health is not new, since the existence of psychosomatic phenomena is not denied. The interesting point is that we wave and say, “Oh, that’s psychosomatic,” rather than studying the effects that thoughts and moods have on people’s physical health. The study of this type of solution would be contrary to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.

If clinical psychology continues to be a degraded field of the humanities, it will be in line with the interests of that same industry.