One thing about psychiatry that people I talk to are always surprised to learn is the disparity between how psychiatrists, psychologists, and others in the field discuss mental illness and psychiatric diagnosis amongst themselves and how they discuss these things in public facing or patient facing contexts.
For example, it has been widely accepted to a certain extent since forever but especially so in the past five years that low levels of serotonin are not the cause of depression. This has been established over and over again through studies and is acknowledged by basically every psychiatrist. And yet you will get called anti-science for stating this well-established fact because people have been told otherwise by their therapists, their psychiatrists, mental health advocacy organizations, and instagram graphics.
On a larger scale, it is also known and reluctantly acknowledged within the profession that there is no known biological cause for any psychiatric diagnosis. (A small number of conditions in the DSM do have known biological causes, such as “Major or Mild Neurocognitive Disorder Due to HIV Infection”, but these are not primarily psychiatric disorders, they are symptoms of illnesses primarily treated by other disciplines where the patient may also see a mental health practitioner as part of their treatment.) But people also do not believe you when you say this because they have heard so many times from mental health professionals and organizations that mental illnesses are biological diseases like any other.
Psychiatrists are generally aware of the epistemological problems plaguing psychiatry, they just choose to keep it in the family. So you will get called anti-psychiatry for stating facts about the field that are regularly said at APA conferences and published in psychiatric journals.
