Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said mental illness may be best treated using "faith-based approaches" as opposed to pharmaceuticals.

He gets so close-

Violent crime has risen over precisely the period we have shuttered these psychiatric institutions. And you know what? The number one psychiatric institution today is jail. It’s prison. And they don’t do a very good job. And now you then get the calls to clear the jails or to have commuting of sentences or shortening of sentences. People leave those jails in a worse psychiatric condition, often, than when they even entered.

Yes! Yes!

We can do this again learning from past mistakes without those abuses. I don’t think I want to be pumping psychiatric institutions with pharmaceuticals into people.

Seems reasonable.

Faith-based approaches – there are better ways to do this.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

And, of course, the ironic thing is that Ramaswamy is a pharma bro.

  • ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
    120·
    9 months ago

    Ramasmarmy saying whatever he thinks the Republican base wants to hear. So weird seeing him bet all in on a base that despises him.

  • carl_dungeon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    67·
    9 months ago

    That’s fucking dumb, people kill each other over religion every single day in staggering numbers. Maybe they can institute a program that has speakers from the IRA and the Taliban come in to talk about strong faith.

    I cant believe grown adults believe in fairy tales, it’s absolute insanity.

    • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
      291·
      9 months ago

      At the end of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys along with Wendy and the other kids are tied to a mast while Captain Hook monologues at them. Peter has pushed Tinkerbell away, and she’s fading out of existence. It seems all hope is lost.

      But then Peter gets an idea and begins to chant. “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do.” Soon, they’re all chanting it together. “I DO believe in fairies! I DO I DO!”

      And Tinkerbell pops back into existence to save the day. This is what faith is. The idea that if you believe in something hard enough it will pop into existence.

      Of course, it’s a fantasy story for children. I can’t believe grown adults think it’s true, either. It’s absolute insanity, agreed. But that’s where Republicans have to meet their constituents, who apparently live in Never Never Land.

  • LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
    58·
    9 months ago

    This guy is an even bigger shill than Turd Cruz. He made his money in pharma, his wife is a physician. And yet here he is shilling for FaiTH BaSeD CuRE.

    Fuck off Vivek

  • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
    39·
    9 months ago

    Fuck George W Bush forever for popularizing “faith based” as a euphemism for people forcing their religion on others.

    • pachrist@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      I don’t know. If I tell the entire church my daughter is depressed, and we all pray about it during the 11AM Sunday service, and every old lady in the church constantly asks her if she’s “feeling blue,” she’ll shut up about it and never trust me with any intimate secrets ever again. That means it’s cured, right?

  • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    9 months ago

    YOU started a pharmaceutical company. Shut the fuck up. Your face is as big as Charlie’s. Seriously, there must be some sort of correlation between right-wing vitriol and small faces because holy fuck.

  • incendiaryperihelion@lemm.ee
    15·
    9 months ago

    Only someone who is (probably) comfortably insulated from the reality that real people face in crises could say something so inane

  • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
    15·
    9 months ago

    It’s kind of like the joke “if alternative medicine worked, it would just be called medicine”.

    A faith-based approach could also be called a hypothesis-based approach: the only thing that distinguishes it from a scientific approach is that it is a hypothesis that either hasn’t been tested or has failed the scientific method.