> Every field has its history of controversies, that doesn't mean the field as a whole is inherently bad.

Psychiatry has gotten caught, repeatedly, at a 100% false positive rate. Think about it, from a mathematical point of view: anything significantly over 50% can only be the result of fraud. Or more specifically, declaring patients ill irrespective of the variable: the patient. Just being completely wrong will only ever get you to 50%, so let's say you might get to 55% on a particularly bad day, but anything higher is fraud.

This has not happened in just 1 experiment but has been repeated, and repeated, and repeated again. In the 19th, 20th and 21st century.

Furthermore actual diseases have systematically been removed from psychiatry. Everything from epilepsy, seizures, milk allergies in children (yes, really), multiple sclerosis, cancer (esp. brain tumors), various hormone imbalances, a number of parasitic infections and other "unexplained" diseases that may interfere with normal behavior (either directly, or for example by causing long-term pain. Or simply by having symptoms but being undiagnoseable (or merely undiagnosed). For example, in both cancer and multiple sclerosis patients may present with symptoms in some cases years before a test for the disease shows a positive result. In the case of cancer a test may in fact remain negative right up to the point the patient dies, diagnoses have been corrected through autopsies where it really wasn't the docter's fault. But the problem is, when referred to psychiatrists, these patients were generally diagnosed with mental illnesses, and treated, in quite a few cases right into the grave.

Psychiatrists had all sorts of very convincing theories (except not really if you read them) how they were going to fix these. Needless to say, none of them were ever verified experimentally, and quite a few have been caught at outright fraud. Even Freud himself is known to have knowingly contributed to help perpetrators of rape hide their crimes by convincing women they didn't happen, and using violence when that failed.

And when you read today's psychiatric theories, for example about EMDR, you know: give it 10 years, and we'll know it to be a fraud as well. Shapiro had plenty of chances, more than enough data, patients, and all the authority and places to publish she could possibly want to verify her treatment. She didn't. Not in over 2 decades. Give it 10 years, and we'll know: it's because she knows it, and herself, to be a fraud. Even if you believe that she wasn't sure, that would mean you concede that she experimented on patients for 2 decades. Any other medical practitioner would not just have been fired, they would have been convicted to decades of prison.

And let's take today's favorite diagnosis Autism/ADHD/Autism Spectrum Disorder. I'm going to have to violate Godwin's law on that one. It sounds absurd, but it's true: Hans Asperger invented that ... to "justify" the large scale killing of Polish and Jewish children in "Aktion T4". Let me just provide a link because I would readily understand you not believing me [1]. This guy is revered by today's psychiatrists, for the same reason Freud was. Not, of course, because he helped people, in fact he killed far more than Dr. Mengele, but because he enabled psychiatry to grow.

Even the more benign theories, like famously Taylorism, turned out to be ... a fraud. Quite simply a fraud. There is zero chance Taylor believed in his theories himself, as he paid people to lie about them.

Second, clear patterns of fraud keep coming forward over time. Famously "hysteria" and, of course, running away from a slave master ("drapetomania"), getting raped, being female in general, being gay (although choosing voluntarily for prostitution is still "being treated" with the patients incarcerated. Well, only for women of course). It turns out psychiatry was only used for social control in those (many) cases. The fight against psychiatrists was an important (and now de-emphasized) part of emancipation in both cases.

HIV actually manages to fall into both categories. God's punishment for being gay, with of course psychiatrists making sure some of that heavenly punishment is not just restricted to posthumous roasting.

Today is different ? Let me just say "VERY unlikely". If something was true for 200 years, and there haven't been any big changes ... why would anyone believe it has changed ?

And psychiatry doesn't actually help patients. This is a somewhat problematic issue that keeps popping up. In empirical studies, it keeps coming forward that many psychiatric treatments don't work better than a placebo. A great number of treatments, that are nevertheless used, are known to be far worse than doing nothing at all. There isn't a single involuntary treatment that's empirically verified better than a placebo despite more than a hundred years of searching for one. Antidepressants are famous for their incredibly bad long-term effects, yet psychiatrists keep prescribing them. Before you say "pharmacological industry", THEY label their products as having a maximum indicated usage of weeks to months. Psychiatrists and even nurses however, give them to patients for years, with disastrous effects. For children Ritalin (and Valium before it) are known to have extreme negative effects on child development with anything but extreme short term use. Valium was in fact quite exceptional in that it's long term effects were relatively benign, but it was addictive and therefore a drug. But it gave much less serious long term problems, especially compared to prozac/fluoxetin/SSRIs, what they use now. The problem with Valium was also that it was abused on a large scale, and when push comes to shove, it's similar to keeping a kid drunk for years, even if liver failure is much less likely. But of course sedation leads to serious problems if it's used for any length of time. Again, any other medical practitioner giving patients medications beyond their indicated usage with known bad effects on the patient ... would lead to jail time.

It's time that the same becomes true for psychiatrists and social workers.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1