Roadmap of mental health research

This was something I suggested for the job I get paid to do.

The term roadmap is an IT term and is sort of like a strategy or a list
of what's going to happen in the future. What I mean it to mean in this
context is the research required to reach a point where something can be
achieved.

The more studies I read the more I think that nothing really works in
mental health, not compared to the placebo effect. It seems every decade
shows horrific treatments don't work. Treatments like the lobotomy and
leucotomy, insulin shock therapy and now ECT.

There is a set of scientific principles which the critical psychiatry
movement use. It's the sort of thing that tries to make mental health a
science rather than an art (a butchery of what the word art means.
Really they mean their treatments are unscientific. Art is not the
antyonym of science. Barbarism is, perhaps, a better antonym.).

So much research fails to take into account these principles. Of course
it's expensive to do this high quality scientific studies. Cheap studies
serve little to no purpose though. Their usually excluded from
systematic reviews and high quality meta-analysis.

There are things which need to be established properly. It seems as
science is applied in mental health care more and more treatments which
were established stop being established, for example SSRIs are more
often starting to compare poorly to the placebo effect and when
publication bias is taken into account effect sizes dwarf into
insignificance. The same is true for psychological therapies. There are
no new placebo controlled antipsychotic trials as far as I am aware
however I haven't looked into this enough to confirm.

The reason for this desperate need to spend research money wisely, so
rather than researching the effect of antidepressants on morality (an
immeasurable construct with the science of today) as was done in Oxford
lets relook at the measures, design a proper public funded
antidepressant trial which looks at long term outcomes, is well
designed, has whopping great sample sizes, is as free from bias as
possible (triple blind design) and will actually reach a scientific
conclusion and a proper one that can stand up to criticism by critical
psychiatrists.

The critical psychiatry movement is the modern antipsychiatry movement.
In the 1970s in was the antipsychiatry movement which focused the desire
of the profession to become more scientific. Bentall and Moncrieff in
the UK, Whitaker in the US and others are the pioneers of the
application of science to the human condition.

They're the force that drives the increase in the use of good evidence
and good science. Anything less can suck on my chocolate salty balls.