A:  As part of cost-reduction measures some medical systems have afforded their patients an average of just 5 to 10 minutes of psychiatric evaluation prior to being initiated on long-term psychoactive medicines, even the powerful ones such as anti-psychotic drugs, after which family practitioners are permitted to prescribe & monitor these patients.  Imagine the uproar if surgeries were being performed by physicans assistants!  I think that because we disrespect the mind & its problems so much, we are willing for any Tom, Dick or Harriet to play psychiatrist, often allowing them to prescribe long-term, potent, mind-altering, personality-altering psychoactive drugs after little more than cursory evaluation. 

The human mind, in my opinion the subject most worthy of our (human) consideration, defining the very profound limits of our inner space, is at the same time ironically the most elusive subject in our experience.  After all, how can one understand mind, using mind? 

The normal human mind is constantly, dynamically in tune & in sync with reality.

 This evening as I walked the dogs in a nearby park, a man, his pushbike lying on the ground nearby, was setting up a small tent in the shelter of a tree beside the lagoon.  It was raw, raining & quite harsh by California standards, & I felt badly for him.