A confluence of topics dealing with mental health, substance abuse, health, public health, Social Work, education, politics, the humanities, and spirituality at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. In short, this blog is devoted to the improvement of the quality of life of human beings in the universe.
Saturday, April 1, 2023
Monday, October 31, 2022
The Power of Stories
Sunday, October 30, 2022
What is the goal of psychotherapy?
Along with this idea is the one that the presenting complaint is not the real complaint. The presenting complaint is just the ticket of admission. The presenting complaint is what the client thinks they are supposed to say, based on their socialization, which makes them an appropriate candidate for psychotherapeutic service.
If you ask most people “What makes you tick?” They become perplexed, annoyed, and defensive. It is in this question that psychotherapy begins.
Psychotherapy is not the same thing as “counseling” and “life coaching” and “emotional management skill training.” Psychotherapy is a much more significant, challenging, and revealing journey into the self.
On this journey what will one eventually find? Our Transcendent Source. The basis of our Divinity.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Your provider will be with you shortly
Orlinsky, David E.. How Psychotherapists Live (p. 4). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
The bolding has been added.
The commodification of psychotherapy based on medical “procedures” is inherently flawed and yet drives the reimbursement systems from health insurers. It has led to the corporatizing of “psychotherapy” in on-line schemes to provide psychological advice even via text messages for monthly service fees charged to a credit card.
What do you make of this?
Recently, at my last medical check-up the LPN took my weight, my temperature, my blood pressure, checked my medication list, and then got up to leave saying “Your provider will be with you shortly.” I was startled by the choice of the word “provider.” I wonder who had scripted her to say instead of “your doctor” or “Dr. Alweis”, “provider.”. And then it dawned on me that this is a large practice and she is “rooming” several patients all day long some of whom are seeing physicians, other P.A.s, some NPs, and some residents. “Provider” covers a lot of roles and professions and is a safe word to use when the discipline of the “provider” isn’t certain. They all to some extent are interchangeable.
In my solo private practice of psychotherapy, there are no “providers.” There is only one Licensed Clinical Social Work Psychotherapist. I ask, “How did you get my name?”
“Oh, my parents saw you twenty years ago. They told me you are good. You helped them.”
“You could go online and talk to someone like BetterHelp.”
“Oh I tried them for six visits. I decided I wanted to talk to a real person.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“Same here.’
Sunday, May 29, 2022
How can you do this work?
Purely in human terms, psychotherapy is an intensely interesting and often personally impactful experience, dealing as it does with personally traumatic events, enduring emotional conflicts, difficult intimate relationships, and challenging moral dilemmas of personal life. 2 Given the kind of work they do, it follows that psychotherapists must also be interesting people. It must take a special kind of person to do such work, day after day as a lifetime career. Yet how are they special, if at all? What are they like as persons that enables them to do such challenging work? Are some kinds of persons better able than others to do this work? Is there a special psychotherapeutic talent? What kind or kinds of persons feel called to learn, practice, and tolerate the kind of work that psychotherapy entails. 3 What does a psychotherapeutic vocation require of those drawn to it?
Orlinsky, David E.. How Psychotherapists Live (pp. 1-2). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
I had read Sue Mann’s article, “How Can You Do This Work?”, in Trauma, Narrative Responses To Traumatic Experience edited by David Denborough in which she describes her work as a counselor in an agency serving adults who were sexually abused as children. Sue describes sharing with others, who ask, what she does for a living, and them, then, saying, “How can you do that work?” Throughout my career of 49 years, I have continually reflected on this question myself.
How can you do the work of a psychotherapist? What motivated you to get into the field, and what keeps you in it, or contributed to your leaving.
Thursday, December 9, 2021
Majority of psychiatrists no longer provide psychotherapy
Researchers analyzing 21 years of data found that the percentage of psychiatrist visits involving psychotherapy has declined by half -- dropping to only 21.6 % of patient visits. Over half of U.S. psychiatrists no longer practice any psychotherapy at all. The study found that for rural, Black, Hispanic, and Medicaid patients psychiatrists' provision of psychotherapy was exceedingly rare.
For more click here.
Editors note:
I have observed this for some time going back even before the 1990s.
Psychiatrists have become primarily pharmacologists who prescribe medications.
Most psychiatrists are not even being trained to provide psychotherapy. By comparison a Licensed Clinical Social Work Psychotherapist in New York State must have six years of supervised training before they can become licensed to provide psychotherapy.
Monday, September 2, 2019
Pscyhotherapeutic fads
Monday, July 31, 2017
Cognitive behavioral therapy improves functioning for people with chronic pain, study shows
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most frequently used psychological intervention for people with chronic pain, and new approaches for improving CBT outcomes may be found in the psychological flexibility model and Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT), according to research.
Editor's note:
There are many reasons why psychotherapy can help people suffering from chronic pain. Stress often aggravates pain and reducing stress may then decrease pain. Also, making a distinction between "pain" and "suffering" is helpful. Some people may have lesser amounts of pain but suffer greatly, while others have higher amounts of pain and suffer much less. Why would this be?
Friday, June 30, 2017
What Kind Of Therapy Is Best For Me?
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Psychotherapy normalizes the brain in social phobia
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Benzodiazepines Continue to be Prescribed Without Psychotherapy to Older Adults
"A new study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, finds that older adults continue to be prescribed benzodiazepines without being offered psychotherapy. This practice persists despite decades of research warning of safety concerns with these drugs and demonstrating the effectiveness of alternative treatments."
I have a few "geriatric" clients in my practice. When they get off the benzos which is difficult because of the withdrawal which exaggerates the symptoms, such as anxiety, for which they were prescribed to begin with, they usually report that they feel better. I usually suggest they only take them if absolutely needed, and don't take them on a regular basis to avoid the development of physical tolerance.
Listening to older people's complaints takes time, time the primary care physician is not reimbursed for in our mercenary system of health care. There are many barriers and obstacles to the PCP referral to mental health professionals, but when done and psychotherapy is engaged in, benefits are worth in the cost in most cases.