{"id":32950,"date":"2017-06-29T01:00:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32950"},"modified":"2017-06-19T09:31:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T13:31:46","slug":"qotd-the-medical-equivalent-of-security-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/06\/29\/qotd-the-medical-equivalent-of-security-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The medical equivalent of security theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The most common reason for admission to a psychiatric hospital is \u201cperson is a danger to themselves or others\u201d. The average length of stay in a psychiatric hospital is about one week.<\/p>\n<p>Some clever person might ask: \u201cHey, don\u2019t most psychiatric medicines require more than a week to take effect?\u201d Good question! The answer is \u201cyes\u201d. Antidepressants classically take four weeks. Lithium and antipsychotics are more complicated, but the textbooks will still tell you a couple of weeks in both cases. And yet people are constantly being brought to psychiatric hospitals for dangerousness, treated with medications for one week, and then sent off. What gives?<\/p>\n<p>As far as I can tell, a lot of it is the medical equivalent of security theater. <\/p>\n<p>Scott Alexander, <a href=\"http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2015\/06\/29\/reflections-from-the-halfway-point\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Reflections From The Halfway Point&#8221;, <em>Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2015-06-29.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most common reason for admission to a psychiatric hospital is \u201cperson is a danger to themselves or others\u201d. The average length of stay in a psychiatric hospital is about one week. Some clever person might ask: \u201cHey, don\u2019t most psychiatric medicines require more than a week to take effect?\u201d Good question! The answer is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,41],"tags":[906,139,201],"class_list":["post-32950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-quotations","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychology","tag-securitytheatre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8zs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38999,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32950\/revisions\/38999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}