Given that 80% of major physical ailments are self-inflicted (including cancer and heart disease) you need to wonder if psychiatric care is not preventive medicine. When I was a college senior, Christian Barnard gave up heart surgery and became a plastic surgeon on these grounds. But the problem with funding psychiatric care is one of incentives. How do you measure the effectiveness or even the delivery of "talking"? How do you make sure the incredible power an effective psychiatrist has over a patient is not misused? There really are no answers to this. Perhaps (my humble suggestion) the answer is to teach psychiatry in the (elementary) schools so people can treat themselves. Given that the most productive minds I know are so because of their own ability to understand and harness their own minds (rather than some "gift" of genius) I believe such training would be marvelously productive (though perhaps, initially socially disruptive). - = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Reagan Mozart Pindus BioStrategist http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Yellary Clinton, Yellalot Spitzer & Angrew Cuomo: Nasty Together]

Given that 80% of major physical ailments are self-inflicted (including cancer and heart disease) you need to wonder if psychiatric care is not preventive medicine. When I was a college senior, Christian Barnard gave up heart surgery and became a plastic surgeon on these grounds. But the problem with funding psychiatric care is one of incentives. How do you measure the effectiveness or even the delivery of "talking"? How do you make sure the incredible power an effective psychiatrist has over a patient is not misused? There really are no answers to this. Perhaps (my humble suggestion) the answer is to teach psychiatry in the (elementary) schools so people can treat themselves. Given that the most productive minds I know are so because of their own ability to understand and harness their own minds (rather than some "gift" of genius) I believe such training would be marvelously productive (though perhaps, initially socially disruptive). - = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Reagan Mozart Pindus BioStrategist http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Yellary Clinton, Yellalot Spitzer & Angrew Cuomo: Nasty Together]