mental health notions- west is best ergo think think think..

[ecuworrier]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/05/west-foisting-mental-health-doctrines-world?INTCMP=SRCH

i caught a bit of this on Wedsday's Guardian ... and i thought yes yes yes!!!!.....

i know for some of us the west foisted mental health doctrines are all we have on that per usual take it or leave it freedom of speech way we have with us....   but some of us have doubts and critiques even of our ever so thought out ways....

what do we think are we telling it wrong something lost in translation or have we thoroughly lost the plot on what we think of as mental health and healthy society and all that ?


GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love,

[tranchiebabe]

I think professionals are too quick to jump in with psychological help when something traumatic happens, assuming all will be badly psychologically effected by an incident! Obviously some will be, but not all by any means. Life has its ups and downs and dramas, but for the most part we should just have to deal with it without resorting to therapy! Good heavens I don't suppose during WW1 and WW2 counsellors were dispatched every time a bomb dropped, or someone lost a loved one at the front.

I am thinking back to an incident when I was about 12, a plane crashed in one of our fields and my father and his staff were first on the scene, which was grisly to say the least. The passengers survived, but the pilot and co-pilot were killed, one had been beheaded in the crash, the other had missing limbs. My father and his workmen weren't offered therapy, nor would they have expected it.

When my youngest daughter was about 10/11 I was driving her to bell ringing practise, when up ahead there was a traffic jam. I told her to get out and walk, as it wasn't far to the church, and I didn't want her to be late. What I hadn't realised was that a motorcyclist had been in an accident with a car, and he had rolled under it and somehow his head had parted company with his body. It had only just happened and my poor daughter walked past this unpleasant incident and saw the severed head! She had a few nightmares of course, but we expected her to get over it, which she did. 

[pow wow]

Hello Tangnefed,
I totally agree with you. Here's something that I've wondered about. Over the past several years I've met about four people that have careers in the mental health area. Each are heavy drinkers and each turn very ugly when drinking. I've come to the conclusion that many are mental and won't address their problems, but feel they are qualified to help others suffering mentally. If it wasn't so sad it would be hilarious.

[EliB]

[AndyHB]

I sometimes wonder whether our western approach to mental health is actually compromised by our apparent willingness to sanction what I have heard some Muslims and Hindus refer to, semi-jokingly, as serialogomy (as opposed to polygamy), often with little or no attempt to take the needs and concerns of children and other people into account.

[EliB]

   That should have read April 1991 not 2001!!!

On the original point....I've also heard, from my Aunt, how "we were all evacuated during the war - didn't see our parents for 2 years and there was no "counselling rubbish" for us".....she doesn't think I should be going to "professionals" - she thinks things should be dealt with "within the family"....I told her that surely the fact that there IS professional help available (sometimes!!) now, when it's NEEDED, is progress.....she still doesn't agree...!! I used to think it was just that generation, but it isn't - it's just individual opinion!

[JJ]

just briefly on the point of counsellors being shipped in to devastating circumstances which is fairly rare in any case other than really dreadful shocks:     no counsellor is going to do or say anything other than to initially and briefly support people in their grief to say that it's OK to cry or to feel or not to feel anything - no counsellor "does" anything other than that.
In the past society has said DO or DON'T do this or that, a counsellor's role is to say - just do whatever you want that's going to be helpful for you (and that does not include harming yourself or others).
Proper counselling is not useful nor appropriate for months or years after the event and that is only if the person wants it.

[EliB]

just briefly on the point of counsellors being shipped in to devastating circumstances which is fairly rare in any case other than really dreadful shocks:     no counsellor is going to do or say anything other than to initially and briefly support people in their grief to say that it's OK to cry or to feel or not to feel anything - no counsellor "does" anything other than that.
In the past society has said DO or DON'T do this or that, a counsellor's role is to say - just do whatever you want that's going to be helpful for you (and that does not include harming yourself or others).
Proper counselling is not useful nor appropriate for months or years after the event and that is only if the person wants it.

I agree JJ, but the problem is that because they always say "counsellors have been brought in"....people get the wrong idea of what counselling ACTUALLY is and what counsellors ACTUALLY do.....and you get ignorant, and very unhelpful, comments!!
And I do think that it's fairly common....not rare at all.... a number of years ago, a friend's wee brother died very suddenly over the summer holidays from an illness....the first few days back at school the school had brought in counsellors. WHY? Death is part of life.....it's not a "trauma" situation, in the true sense of the word - and as you say, counselling isn't appropriate in the immediate aftermath of ANY real trauma!

[AndrewF]

I remember there was a kid died at my (boarding) prep school - I must have been about 11. There was no though of councilor 'being brought in'. We were simply told it had happened, and that if anyone wanted to talk about it any of the staff would be happy to do so... I don't know if anyone took up the offer, though it was definitely discussed with class-mates. Mind you, it must have made a bit of an impact cos I can still remember the boy's name...

[ecuworrier]

I remember there was a kid died at my (boarding) prep school - I must have been about 11. There was no though of councilor 'being brought in'. We were simply told it had happened, and that if anyone wanted to talk about it any of the staff would be happy to do so... I don't know if anyone took up the offer, though it was definitely discussed with class-mates. Mind you, it must have made a bit of an impact cos I can still remember the boy's name...

that sounds pretty advanced .... i can't recall anyone actually dying while i was at school but one or two parents including one on the way home from a school event.... which was pretty shocking... in the environments i was in i don't recall much in the way of sympathy... oh i seem to recall in my last year a parent died and that was devastating the adults at the school did their best ...  which wasn't always what the person expected or needed... i don't recall counsellors or anything

GOD BLESS!

Peace adn Love,

[EliB]

Thinking further back, at primary school there were 2 girls who died of leukemia. One was in the year above me (I was p4), but I'd known her at nursery. The other girl was a primary 7 and a popular girl in the school! I remember both times a lot of upset children and teachers, but there was no talk of counsellors or anything then. That would have been 1979 and 80.....maybe the "bringing counsellors in" was a few years down the line then - my friend's brother (who died during the summer holidays) died in '90 and my friend was murdered at school in 1991 - things had obviously moved on big time in the intervening years!

[ecuworrier]

  we seem to be focusing on counselling in crises... that perhaps overtakes from what previously would have been given to best of ability as pastoral care freinds family neighbours spiritual leaders etc in the past

is the modern era better for these approaches?  i mean if one has not had the experience of counselling can one judge that?  or if one has then what can learn from the mental health approaches of the proffessionals ... (not asking for personal details that's supposed to be protected under client confidentiality!  but overviews and impressions of the experience welcome!)

GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love,

[EliB]

For me, counselling by professionals has been essential! There is no way that I could have spoken in the way that I have (albeit not right away - it takes time to build up trust to be able to speak freely!!) to family or friends - absolutely no way!!! And that's not a criticism of my family or friends - but sometimes people can be too close and a more objective view point is needed.....that and there's the knowledge that that person's soul function for you is to listen and guide - and you can walk away.....family and friends are always going to "know"!!
I DID have an aunt say to me once that I shouldn't be "talking about such things" to a stranger....that "these things" should be "kept in the family"....I told her she sounded like something from the Godfather!!! This is the same aunt, incidently, who a good while ago, told me that **** was "just sex when you don't want it"!!!! Emmmm....no it isn't!!!!

[AndrewF]

"but sometimes people can be too close and a more objective view point is needed...."
A very good point.

[AndyHB]

  we seem to be focusing on counselling in crises... that perhaps overtakes from what previously would have been given to best of ability as pastoral care freinds family neighbours spiritual leaders etc in the past

is the modern era better for these approaches?  i mean if one has not had the experience of counselling can one judge that? 

I suppose that I have been in a number of situations where counselling could have come into play, but didn't, and I'm not sure that I suffered.  In some cases it impacted on me directly - such as when my father died whilst I was in India and seriously ill myself; sometimes it has been indirect, such as when I have been responsible for a group of pupils (in this case as a dorm. parent) when one of their siblings have died.  In all the cases I can think of, the important think was that we weren't pushed to a counsellor, but people were there for me and others to talk to, cry on the shoulders of, vent off anger, ... in a context of love and care - even when they weren't my own family.  When I was suspended from teaching some years back, following an incident where I accidentally hit a pupil and they complained (and I was eventually exonerated), it was my small group from church and my wife and elder daughter (the other was away at uni. most of the time) who encouraged and supported me.

I think that, with the increasing breakdown of the family over the past 50/60 years, many people no longer have that fall-back situation to 'protect their backs'.