I think therapy as a 'treatment' is way overrated. It is a good service to understand oneself, but treatment for MH conditions--I don't believe it is all that effective.

It's overrated, it seems, not by consumers/clients, but by authorities who are promoting it as a treatment for mental disorders. (But I also can't stand Western healthcare and put MH services in the same category.)

The way therapy is promoted now, the status quo seems to be go to therapist after therapist until you find the "right match", while spending years and hundreds or thousands of dollars, sometimes ending up worse than before or completely deteriorating. Then they are told "it can happen to you", "just find the right match", "I got lucky; you can too" or you hear someone say it has worked for them, but it took them 20+ years to get there. It just seems so crazy to me.

One reason it's oversold is because the research is highly flawed for many reasons. I don't think we can extrapolate the research results from such studies to the clinical world, so nobody really knows its effectiveness aside from the antecdotal evidence. It's next to impossible to understand, measure, interpret, and apply 'effectiveness' the way it's done now.

MH treatments are in the dark ages, and I can only hope for my children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and their children, etc. that it will change soon.