Psychological treatments like exposure therapy are highly effective in treating PTSD, panic disorder and phobia. A significant proportion of people with severe anxiety-related disorders can be completely cured in a matter of weeks. It doesn't work for everyone, but thousands of lives have been transformed by psychotherapy.

The best available evidence suggests that psychological treatments are equally effective as drug treatments for most common psychiatric disorders. Psychological therapies are generally orders of magnitude more expensive than drug treatments, so unfortunately they aren't as widely available.

Psychiatry is an incredibly challenging field and there are a lot of things we just don't know. Drug companies might have a strong incentive to keep selling you pills, but insurers have an equally strong incentive to cure you outright. Single-payer healthcare systems like the British NHS have a huge incentive to use the best, most cost-effective treatments available. It's just an unfortunate fact that we can't fix everyone. There is no magic wand to cure all human misery and there's no conspiracy to keep people sick.

http://cochranelibrary-wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD0033... http://cochranelibrary-wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD0111...

You say that like it's a bad thing! Reducing symptoms of depression has saved lives.

How is that a bad thing? Sure, a cure would be _significantly_ better, but reducing symptoms can result in a vastly better quality of life.

... which is exactly what I was saying? When you don't know how to cure something, you treat the symptoms.