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The Psychology and Stigma of Therapy


Minds_Eye

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What is therapy and how is it supposed to work? Is it just another form of mental/behavioral manipulation? From what I know, it's like a mind game where a professional is being paid 50 minutes for an 'hour' session with someone (who really doesn't want to be there) to listen, analyze, and attempt to bring about a change of thinking/feeling. It's a closed room relationship where the therapists are the secret-holders and outside perspective-providers. Outside of that room, the relationship is confidential and is not supposed to exist until the next scheduled appointment. The good ones are able to help people transform their lives whereas the bad ones can leave people more messed up in the head than when they started. The stigma attached to therapy appears to go both ways because therapists are often labeled as 'quacks' who rely on words to cure and that you'd have to be 'crazy' or under desperate duress to need one. If I had to guess which state has the most therapists, I'd wager it to be NY. For those who can afford it, it might almost seem trendy nowadays to have one handy...

Considering the shootings and other violent crime headlining the media, would therapy have helped to prevent those individuals from acting out so destructively? I'd like to believe that if (good) therapy was a part of a universal healthcare system easily available to every child and adult, there might be less murders, molestations, and divorces. Any thoughts on therapy's effectiveness and the current state of mental healthcare?

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Mental care is a tricky subject. I think the most important thing is for the patient to be very serious about it and have a good support (relationships of love) group around them. Institutions should not exist that MANDATE care against the patients will and against the families will. So many institutions are literally playing Guinea pig with peoples lives and don't even have one bit of respect or care for them. It is my opinion that most cases of mental disease are underdeveloped signs of spiritual awakening and we live in a world that won't allow to see the outcome of it. Drugs often cause the situation to get worst. I cannot speak for every situation because thank god I don't have to deal with it directly but I have seen some people who have. This is not to say medicine isn't helpful. Of course it is. But I do think the structure of the world is at the root of most of this and that a person can turn out living a good prosperous healthy life if they are given the chance to be their true and natural selves as apposed to one that is being controlled by society. I believe there are very good therapists out there though. And if you happen to NOT have a good one, I think you should run out of there as quick as possible and keep searching and get involved in other activities that will help. Take initiative and be responsible for your own health. Do not rely on someone else to fix you. You are there to learn about psychology and that happens in many more places than in that persons office.

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I don't know if therapy is different from counseling, I guess it is. Here in Oklahoma, the state mental facilities, such as they are, use cognitive-behavioral therapy or counseling and while that had limited success or use for me, being able to also just talk to someone and kind of vent was for me, the most helpful part of counseling, even if it was only 30 to 45 minutes every few weeks (I have no care and the place is 30 minutes away so I had to close my charts there, no counseling, no meds). I was kinda interested to do one of those lie on the couch type things, but that's not what we do here. =(

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Counseling is a part of therapy, but I think there should be more than just talking for the process to be truly effective. Paranormalcy, I'm glad you were able to find it somewhat helpful as limited as it was. It can be frustrating when you feel like there's no one who can listen to and understand your problems. Friends and family may be willing to listen, but only someone with experience and a good psychology background can understand what you might need to do to change things for the better. It's too bad the therapist pool is restricted to the state in which they're licensed. I wonder if lying on the couch is obsolete now...

A friend of mine had asked me if I knew any good therapists because her friend's brother was showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia and self-harming tendencies. The family is still struggling with how to cope with this behavior and cannot afford any long-term, mental healthcare services. In this case, maybe a psychiatrist and meds would be more appropriate? The family though probably could use some supportive counseling to help get them through this stressful time.

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I expect that most people do want counseling/therapy, except for those court-ordered to undergo it, because they want to feel better. As mentioned, there's cognitive behavioral therapy, which generally doesn't use drugs, and there are other psychiatrists who prescribe anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds, whatever they think will help. It's a shame there's a stigma to therapy/counseling, but there is. Other conditions may be mildly embarrassing (hemorrhoids, hee hee) but there's no stigma going to the doctor when they get too bad to cope.

Does it really help? I dunno. Never taken psychiatric medicines, so can't vouch for their effectiveness. Got several sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy free when I had cancer, as part of overall treatment, and it was weird because I didn't really need it (was coping well mentally, despite all the physical issues). It did sorta seem like "just another form of mental/behavioral manipulation? From what I know, it's like a mind game where a professional is being paid 50 minutes for an 'hour' session with someone (who really doesn't want to be there) to listen, analyze, and attempt to bring about a change of thinking/feeling." I think the difference is that if someone wants advice on what to do to solve their problem, even non-drug therapy can be helpful. If I hadn't already known relaxation techniques to deal with pain, for example they might have been a wonderful thing to learn.

But if a person doesn't want help, like many schizophrenic people who are convinced they have the truth and others are lying, therapy, especially non-drug therapy, will be less useful. Same for people with brain imbalance issues like depression or bipolar syndrome, for a different reason. CBT might help them learn to cope with the debilitating effects of their illness, but it won't fix the underlying condition, and we don't even have drugs that are guaranteed to work.

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And then, there are those psychologist/psychiatrist/therapist movies like Good Will Hunting, Sixth Sense, Halloween, Antwone Fisher, A Beautiful Mind, and Silence of the Lambs. If there were more therapists like the character played by Robin Williams who genuinely care for their patients and aren't afraid to make the extra effort when it matters, I think the profession would gain a lot more credibility.

Even if people want to be helped, it's not a simple thing to change someone's habits and beliefs. Can you imagine the challenges of counseling a stubborn teenager?

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