Ziay!

Cranky Old Goat

If Psychology as a Science is considered more Concrete why do Actuaries and Doctors attribute Higher Suicide Rates to Psychiatrists and Psychologists over Philosphers.

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I posted as a philosopher after a answer to a previous question.
I have an interesting personal twist after best answer is chosen, so I will put it to a vote.

hahagetsmart314

Becarefull of truth

know_it_all

Why would concreteness have anything to do with suicide rates, especially reducing suicide rates? As it turns out doctors and medical student have high suicide rates, and dentists used to (they may still, but I am not sure). The concreteness of the subject they study does not seem relevant.

The second thing to say is that people tend to go into professions they find of personal value. I know people who got an interest in medical school from having a family member in the hospital. Notice that many women enter medical school thinking that studying gynecology is the most exciting thing they can do with their lives, while not many men think gynecology is quite so interesting.

Likewise, people who have a bit of psychological illness may find psychiatry or psychology an interesting field. It would not surprise me if someone first got interested in psychology from learning about the antidepressant they were prescribed. One more thing is that there is biological psychology and neuropsychology, and there is a strong trend in this direction. Freud and psychoanalytic theory went of fashion 20 years ago, and psychology has continued to get more concrete and more advanced in understanding brain physiology.

Phillip

From your own question: 'attribute higher suicide rates to psychiartrists and psychologists'. The problem isn't really the attibution of these rates to the 2 professions.

One thing that our legal system has done to help people, is to utilize mental health professionals. As we have seen a greater increase of people being refered to these professionals, to be under suicide watches, and to be treated for such problems, we also can assume that the treatments can be documented as failing more than before.

This is another situation that has an open ended graph without actually changing the scale. As more people are refered to mental health professionals, more people will recieve the help they need. However, as we don't have the funding and the ability to house everyone who is mentally in need, we are faced with the issue of treating and releasing a person.

The problem with this type of resoultion is that if we treat and release, we risk people not being helped in the first place, they are released back into their own enviroment and their own stresses will eventually break what mental health professionals have tried to change.

Because of this, not everyone who is treated by a mental health professional is cured the first time. From experience it took me well over a year to help me through my mental illness. But, the reason it took over a year was because i was treated and released, brought back to the stress that caused my issue in the first place. Some people can not resolve this on their own, some people HAVE to be in an encolsed mental health area, away from the stress that casued their mental instability.

The more documented cases that we have of people being treated, the more likely we have documented cases of these people committing suicide. Before, we had very few documented cases, and very few documented deaths pertaining to suicide.

So, i don't believe it is more of an attribution of these problems to the mental health professionals, i believe instead it is the fact that these professionals don't have the facility nor funding to fully help those who need it.