Editing Anti-psychiatry (section)

== Psychiatry as pseudoscience and failed enterprise ==
Many of the above issues lead to the claim that psychiatry is a [[pseudoscience]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Warme |first=Gordon |title=Daggers of the Mind: Psychiatry and the Myth of Mental Disease |location=Canada |publisher=House of Anansi |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-88784-197-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/daggersofmindpsy00warm }}</ref> According to some philosophers of science, for a theory to qualify as science it needs to exhibit the following characteristics:
* ''parsimony'', as straightforward as the phenomena to be explained allow (see [[Occam's razor]]);
* ''empirically testable and falsifiable'' (see [[Falsifiability]]);
* ''changeable'', i.e. if necessary, changes may be made to the theory as new data are discovered;
* ''progressive'', encompasses previous successful descriptions and explains and adds more;
* ''provisional'', i.e. tentative; the theory does not attempt to assert that it is a final description or explanation.

Psychiatrists [[Colin A. Ross]] and [[Alvin Pam]] maintain that biopsychiatry does not qualify as a science on many counts.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ross |first=Colin |title=''"Errors of logic in biological psychiatry" in Colin Ross and Alvin Pam ''Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry |location=NY |publisher=Wiley & Sons |pages=85–128 |year=1995}}</ref>

Psychiatric researchers have been criticized on the basis of the [[replication crisis]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theconversation.com/why-students-are-the-answer-to-psychologys-replication-crisis-90286|title=Why students are the answer to psychology's replication crisis|first1=David|last1=Stanley|first2=Ian|last2=Newby-Clark|first3=Jeffrey R.|last3=Spence|website=The Conversation|date=21 February 2018|access-date=25 December 2018|archive-date=30 December 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181230135049/http://theconversation.com/why-students-are-the-answer-to-psychologys-replication-crisis-90286|url-status=live}}</ref> and textbook errors.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1007/s12144-016-9539-7|title = Education or Indoctrination? The Accuracy of Introductory Psychology Textbooks in Covering Controversial Topics and Urban Legends About Psychology|journal = Current Psychology|volume = 37|issue = 3|pages = 574–582|year = 2016|last1 = Ferguson|first1 = Christopher J|last2 = Brown|first2 = Jeffrey M|last3 = Torres|first3 = Amanda V|s2cid = 49184894}}</ref> Questionable research practices are known to bias key sources of evidence.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-do-null-fields-tell-us-about-fraud.html|title=*Reflective Disequilibrium*: What do null fields tell us about fraud risk?|last=Carl|date=5 May 2014|access-date=25 December 2018|archive-date=27 December 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181227193900/http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-do-null-fields-tell-us-about-fraud.html|url-status=live}}</ref>
 
[[Stuart A. Kirk]] has argued that psychiatry is a failed enterprise, as mental illness has grown, not shrunk, with about 20% of American adults diagnosable as mentally ill in 2013.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kirk |first=Stuart A. |title=Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs |year=2013 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |page=326}}</ref>

According to a 2014 meta-analysis, psychiatric treatment is no less effective for psychiatric illnesses in terms of treatment effects than treatments by practitioners of other medical specialties for physical health conditions. The analysis found that the effect sizes for psychiatric interventions are, on average, on par with other fields of medicine.<ref>{{cite web|author1=Bret S. Stetka|author2=Cristoph U. Correll|title=Psychiatry Practice Changers 2014|url=https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/835894_4|website=[[Medscape]]|date=December 8, 2014|access-date=April 14, 2018|archive-date=July 14, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160714084538/http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/835894_4|url-status=live}}</ref>