Just Take A Pill

From The New York Times today comes an article entitled Talk Doesn't Pay, So Psychiatry Turns to Drug Therapy.

It takes a look at current trends in the psychiatric profession that have led psychiatrists to forego talk therapy altogether and rely solely on drugs to treat their patients.

Here's the understatement of the week:

Medicine is rapidly changing in the United States from a cottage industry to one dominated by large hospital groups and corporations, but the new efficiencies can be accompanied by a telling loss of intimacy between doctors and patients. And no specialty has suffered this loss more profoundly than psychiatry.

It is sad that not only are they giving up on the potential to actually heal rather than treat patients, but that it is probably indicative of the direction in which the practice of medicine is moving as a whole.