Firstly, I'd just like to acknowledge just how amazing modern medicine is when it comes to saving lives and improving the quality of life (eg joint replacements, prosthetics).
However, when it comes to psychiatric/psychological issues, it seems crazy to me just how many treatments are used with very little scientific basis behind them. While I accept that the brain is an incredibly complex organ and very little is actually known about it, some of the treatments are straight up inhumane. Things like electroconvulsive therapy, insulin shock therapy, cranial electrotherapy, etc, are some of the most disturbing things I have ever had described to me. Yet unlike all other fields of medicine, which require rigorous testing and understanding before a drug or procedure is approved, when asked how treatments such as those aforementioned work, the most you will get from even the most experienced psychiatrists is "it is proposed that it does this, it is suggested that is does that, it seems to do this in most patients". Most of these
"treatments" seem to have trickled down from the early 1900's when some psychiatrists/psychologists were more akin to torturers than medical practitioners, and for whatever reason the practices were widely adopted and remain in use today, despite very little being known about their mode of action.
What is even worse, however, is the treatment of these individuals. Once someone has been labelled as a psychiatric patient/special needs, it is near impossible to shake that title and noone listens anymore. They are often treated mlike experimental subjects and like non-human beings. In fact, I would say that their lives are probably more similar to a prisoners: they are there for the purpose of rehabilitation and in some cases reintegration, but instead, they are merely trapped by their label and are subject to some of the cruelest treatments, which may or may not work.