Actually, I am a rusted-on libiterarian. I think any adult citizen is entitled to whatever drug they choose. (Subject only to their ability to pay for it.) Prozac, asprin, heroin, cynaide, paint stripper, I don't care. If I want to take it, it is no-one's business but my own. If it's bad for me, so be it: it's my own stupid fault. Think of it as evolution in action.
But if we are going to continue with the current scheme, where you have to get someone else's permission to do things to your own self (a fundamental violation of your rights as a free citizen in a free country, but that's what we all put up with at present) then, sure, clinical psychologists are not fools. One-third of their "science" is baloney, and another third is wishful thinking, but that doesn't mean they are complete idiots. They get a lot of experience, a lot of hands-on knowledge, and no real university hands out a phD in Psychology to schoolboys. You can't even practice clinical psych at all without masters-level qualifications including two year's supervised practice, so we are not talking raw beginners here.
As a society, every year we are adding more and more special rules to give certain powerful interest groups more control over our lives. I'll give you a little example. (Prof will understand this, of course, others, well it depends on if you happen to be familiar with the particular condition.)
Tannin has psoriasis. Has had since he was in his mid-twenties. In the early days the doctors treated it with cortisone-based creams, which worked very well until they started having nasty side-effects. These days, it is recognised that using cortisone for mild to moderate psoriasis is like pruning your rose-bush with a chain-saw. Tannin and his doctor both decided at about the same time that this was not a good idea. A little later, the prescription-rules gurus decided that cortisone-based psoriasis treatments did more harm than good and took them off the list. (Except for extreme cases.)
But there are also two relatively benign substances that are commonly used to treat psoriasis. No-one really knows how they work - it is an astonishingly little understood condition when you remember that it affects about one seventh of the population.) The drug companies have a million different trade names for their various potions and lotions, but they all come down to either coal tar or dithrinol. In Tannin's case, the coal tar cremes do very little bar make a gooey, brown mess on his elbow (or whatever other spot is in question), but the dithranol-based ones work quite well for a little while.
Essentially, psoriasis is never cured, but you can make it go into remission sometimes, and if you succeed in that, the remission can last for years. To achieve this though, you have to be (a) lucky, and (b) very, very persistant with your treatment regime. Tannin doesn't try to achieve that with elbows and knees, but doesn't like it when it pops up on his face or hands, and tends to treat those fairly seriously. Up until about five years ago, all he had to do was walk into a chemist's shop (pharmacist in the US, I think) and buy some dithranol now and then, remember to use it twice a day, every day for perhaps two or three months till the spot dissapeared and a good month or two afterwards as well to make that particular place go right into remission.
But now, since about five years ago, the facist mongrels in Canberra have decided that dithranol is a prohibited substance, and can only be had on prescription. Tannin talked to a couple of pharmicists and a couple of doctors about this, and none of them could think of a good reason for the change. (Tannin could: it serves as yet another softly-softly extension of the power-base and swelling of the income stream of the virulent trade union called the AMA. But then, you see, Tannin's training is in the social sciences, so he is well-equipped to spot these things. Being naturally suspicious helps too.)
Net result: to treat a simple, non-life threatening condition, which he has had for 20 years and understands well, with a benign, effective substance with no known side effects, Tannin now has to:
* Make an appointment
* Take time off work
* Wait around for ages in the waiting room, getting bored stupid
* Pay quite a lot of money
* Go to the chemist and get the exact same tube of goo that he self-prescribed ten years ago.
And all of this to "consult" someone who knows a good deal less about Tannin's psoriasis than Tannin does himself!
