What stands in the way is human factors - the very things which mental health attempts to apply science to. It's not just the various forms of bias. It's the dogma, the same quality which religion has, where people's prejudices make things hard to change.
Mental illness is a biological illness, for example, is a dogma like mental illness is a punishment from god. I'd be considered a heretic if I questioned either. Psychiatry has something to replace god: the apparent use of science. This is false rather than poor science.
True scientific methods are hard to apply in any new field of science but there's nothing harder than the science of the human condition.
What's different though are the judgements. A bottom quark is not better or worse than a top quark. They just exist. The labels have a value to describe extremes of difference but not extremes of value.
In mental health it is different. A difference has a value judgement. Difference can be measured negatively. It can be perjoratised. That's ok in a sense of human judgement and the lack of validity of human judgement in anything we consider true science.
It's not ok when science is used to justify and enforce human judgements, i.e. when different behaviours, emotions and experiences of consciousness are judged abnormal then science is applied.
This false science is common in mental health. A good example is psychiatry. About a century of research has shown seizures to be a good thing for treatment resistant behavioural and emotional disorders. Psychiatry values the electrically induced seizure more than real doctors value the operation which removes half a child's brain to treat seizures.
Ect was invented without true evidence. It was used without consent on people the medical profession considers sub-human. It kills people with different emotions and behaviours. But, thankfully, it helps those that aren't killed. At least as well as sham ect.
Those deaths were because medicine didn't know what else to do. Except the results of the placebo controlled trials say it all:
Do more, you lazy fucking cunts. Be good doctors. Do no harm. Don't electrocute when you can give time and energy, the sort of time and energy you'd give if the patient was in a trial.
Stop creating illness if you've taken an oath which says do no fucking harm. You have no right to be doctors if you do.
You're just murders with a profession, a degree and without any recourse. After all (non) doctors have already killed without recourse when they treated behaviour. 1,800 people a year were killed by them. It's higher than the murder rate.
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