Quote:
Originally Posted by LabRat27
Treatment =/= cure
Therapy doesn't help every person. But then again no treatment for any condition helps any person. And some therapists are better than others. But overall therapy does work, and to say otherwise is irresponsible. People are already scared enough of therapy without misinformation. We can talk about the bad things that happened to us, but that's not the same as saying therapy is useless or bad.
If you had a medical doctor who made a mistake or behaved unethically or exploited you would you then tell people not to go to medical doctors?
|
Thank you for putting it so articulately!
Budfox, I think therapists need to be more honest about the fact that therapy won't work for everyone, and that that there can be negative, not just neutral and positive, outcomes. We need to be honest about the fact that we're in the early stages of understanding the brain, and that treatment for mental health issues isn't as effective as treatment for illness that happens elsewhere in the body. But LabRat is right in saying that overall, therapy is helpful.
In terms of your quote, the only issue I have is the bit about helping someone change their feelings, which I'm not sure is possible, at least not directly. A lot of the rest makes sense to me. I'm not a psychologist, but I did spend four years studying psychology. I do have a better understanding of patterns of behaviour, symptoms that need to be shown in order to make a diagnosis, and which type of treatment will likely be effective with certain kinds of issues, than the average person on the street. I'm sure more training would have given me an even better understanding. Psychology gets its info from scientific experiments - - it's not a faith. But psychology as its thought about today is only fifty years old.
I personally prefer counsellors to clinical psychologists because I think treatment for mental health isn't found through analysing everything to within an inch of its life, and because psychologists overestimate how much they can help me. At this stage in my life, I need the art.
