Hey! That psychotherapy thing happened to me too!

Except my root problem was that I was having a strange, eventually sexual relationship with a psychotherapist (in training) who shouldn't have been charging me - free psychotherapy is how the priests give back to the community.

But someday, addiction is going to go the way of smallpox. So will AIDS and cancer. Until then, the AA way is working well with my little pea brain that has evolved to have a certain propensity toward religious beliefs.

It must take a lot of years and serious work to be this arrogant, condescending, dismissive, all-knowing and obnoxious. How nice for you that you have the universe all figured out. Now please go away and restrict your mewling to the James Randi Foundation forum. Penn Gillette and Michael Shermer would be delighted, I'm sure, to meet a fellow know-it-all.

Mr. Stanton Peele has not done his homework and embodies the very thing he is criticizing.
A true scientific mind is an open mind that accepts nothing at face value but also rejects
nothing at face value.

The scientific community is as irrational as the spiritual community. The spiritual community
is a rational as the scientific community.

It would take a whole book to dismantle step by step the irrational thought process of Mr. Peele
and so this not the forum for it. The broad generalizations of his article betrays a lack of real
insight. There is a valid point to be made about the irrational but it certainly wasn't made here.

As a hint I would say that Mr. Peele's intellectual posturing dismisses thousands of years of
wisdom teaching from all over the world; teachings not derived from academic studies or untested
beliefs but from direct experiences into the nature of reality.

And here's the kicker - young people are actually MORE likely to believe this bull!

Of course belief in fantasy is greater in the young.

All children engage in fantasy. As knowledge is gained through reason, it replaces fantasy.

Although it obviously varies a great deal, in general the younger someone is the less likely it is that they have considered these questions seriously and reasoned through to solid conclusions. Even if they have, new evidence, when considered may change some minds.

However, once people have embraced the reality of pseudosciences, they rarely go back.

But is anyone besides me bothered by the fact that we have made no inroads in reducing any category of major mental illness, many of which (like bipolar disorder) have increased exponentially?

We have. We have also increased our ability to identify these disorders and reduced the stigma attached to seeking help for mental illness (which results in more diagnoses). Your anecdote does not represent progress, but rather the past. The field of mental health services is moving toward evidence-based practices, most of which do not involve the kind of traditional psychotherapy your friend likely experienced.

The other thing that has grown like mushrooms is the prescription of psychiatric medications, particularly for the young.

Um, because we have more of them, they work better and with fewer side effects, and people are more likely to seek help due to reduced social stigma.

Honestly, did you take basic research methods? Ever hear of confounding variables?

I won't argue that people are not irrational, but dude, look in a mirror.

Mr. Stanton is not rejecting claims on face value. He rejects claims for which multiple attempts have been made to find scientifically rigorous evidence but for which none has been found.

I feel confident I can speak for Mr. Stanton in this respect:

If you showed Mr. Stanton scientifically rigorous, independently replicated, evidence that, say, prayer works, or homeopathy, or astrology, or that vaccines cause autism, he would do an about face, admit he was wrong, and that these things are "true" (because "true" to a rational person like Mr. Stanton means that there is, in fact, scientifically rigorous, independently replicated evidence.)

Of course, it is impossible to prove that something does not exist. You can only continue to reduced your confidence in that thing. No matter how low a rational person's confidence is in X, they will change their mind when presented with scientifically rigorous, independently replicable evidence of X.

The difference if scientific vs. spiritual/religious world views is summed up wonderfully by two lines in Tim Minchin's masterful poem, "Storm":

"Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."

Learn more about Tim Minchin and listen to the entire Storm.

Loved the article! My one minor quibble is the parenthetical line "(You know, the youngsters that many Republicans and Fox broadcasters want to make sure are taught creationism.)"

While technically correct that many Republicns *do* want creationism taught, there are probably also many Democrats and members of other political parties who also would like to see it taught. But there are also many Republicans who are atheist (or simply rational) who respect and admire the separation of church and state and *don't* want to see it taught (I know several in this category). So we see the problem is not "republicans" as a group -- it is the religious right, which although it frequently manifests itself through Republicans, is not synonymous with being a member of the party (which I am not by the way, although I do subscribe to many of their conservative fiscal views).

In the name of tolerance, the mental health community has eschewed evidence-based fact for inclusion. Sadly, this includes a great number of "treatments" and "modalities" that simply aren't true. "Alternative" and "complementary" medicine are terms used to describe "things that don't work, but may have a placebo effect." The things that work, we call "medicine." Science isn't perfect and doesn't know everything, but it's aware of at least one important thing - the fact that it doesn't know everything, and must keep adapting and adjusting to new evidence. Thank you Dr. Peele for a much needed article.

Well, I'm a pretty savvy, Western-science realist but the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous really DO work: http://www.settlenow.org/ShamebyAnyOtherName.html