PT20.S4.Q8- The symptoms of mental disorder

miriaml7

I'm currently working on drilling NA and have gone back to re-do the CC lessons on negation. I have slowly started to find success in applying Ellen Cassidy's strategy of finding the loophole in the argument. For this stimulus, my loophole was: What if psychotherapy helps treat the chemical imbalance? Just because you don't know about the imbalance doesn't mean that there isn't a possibility that the current treatment would help address it. After reading answer choice A, I immediately circled it. However, I decided to read through all the other answer choices. I was able to easily eliminate B and C. B addressees a comparative issue that was not directly addressed in the stimulus. Meanwhile, C simply did nothing for the argument. I was left with A, D, and E. A fit my loophole nicely, but D seemed so tempting. I ended up negating the answers, but it seems like I negated them incorrectly. Would appreciate it if someone could check my negations:

For A, I negated it to:

Treatment by psychotherapy can produce some effective reduction in or correction of chemical imbalances ......

For D, I negated it to:

Either psychotherapy is more effective or there is a tie between the effectiveness of medication and psychotherapy, in regards to trying patients with mental disorders.

How would you negate answer choice "E"

Also, why are D and E worth eliminating?

Thanks in advance!

Admin Note: https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-20-section-4-question-08/

SSBM1000

Hello,

Regarding why D and E are wrong, D is wrong because we don't need medication to always be more effective in treating mental disorders, we just need it to be the only effective remedy for mental disorders resulting from chemical imbalances. E is wrong because we don't need psychotherapy to only reduce symptoms from mental disorders. It can outright cure many mental disorders, we just need it to be ineffective on mental disorders resulting from chemical imbalances as the passage says only medication is effective for treating those.

miriaml7

Thank you! @SSBM1000