College and other stress can highlight and make mental health problems worse, I thought this piece had some interesting discussion, for better or worse. What do you guys think about the current approach to mental health?
https://srconstantin.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2016/12/12/sane-thinking-about-mental-problems/
Ummmm…I disagree strongly with this piece.
I mean, in theory - in small bits - I suppose some of the tenets are fine. Many therapists would encourage you to write in a diary, talk to friends, or read books if that helps you feel better, for example. Most mental health practitioners would say that recovery is a bunch of small steps over time. I don’t think any good mental health practitioner would tell anyone that time in a mental hospital is amazing or that as soon as you seek help you’ll instantly feel better. In fact, many therapists are well aware of the fact that many clients who enter therapy - either talk or medication - start off feeling worse. They may have spent so much time avoiding their problems or not dealing with them directly that starting to think about the more often is painful.
But I think this young author has many twisted ideas about mental health care (understandable perhaps) and she’s giving really dangerous advice.
First of all, I’m not really sure which YA novels she’s reading or movies she’s watch, but I rarely see positive depictions of mental health hospitals. At best, they are depicted as places that people are forced to go against their will and that over-medicate “free spirits” into a zombified version of themselves. At worst, they’re depicted as frightening loony bins that ordinary people don’t “belong in” and must escape at all costs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a positive, sane, or realistic depiction of a mental health treatment facility (not all of which are hospitals, btw.)
Second of all, mental hospitals and treatment facilities are for extreme cases of imminent danger. Your average college student wouldn’t necessarily have to start there, or even go. I handled psychological incidents for my graduate college as a resident director, and in most cases the students were encouraged to talk to a counselor at our campus’s counseling services. Only uncommonly did they have to go to a hospital.
Third of all, her outlook on mental health therapy makes me wonder if she’s ever been to therapy. She seems to draw a hard line between “being treated” as if that is something passive that happens to you and “actually doing things to make yourself better.”
But that’s what therapy is. Any talk therapist worth their salt will tell you that therapy involves a lot of work from the client themselves. The therapist is mainly there as a guide to help teach the client skills to help change their thinking and manage their mental health. She also approaches the different models of mental health thinking in classic “I just took a class on abnormal psychology sense.” They do teach you those models in a basic undergrad-level class on counseling care; what they don’t teach you is the only place they actually exist as discrete models is in textbooks. Most therapists integrate many models together when giving therapy. For example, there are many therapists that use a spiritual skills-based approach (I have a friend who is a Buddhist psychologist, for example). Some take a medical and skills approach (prescribing you meds while also teaching you behavioral skills to manage your illness).
Also, I strongly disagree with her assertions that trying to connect friends to mental health help is somehow disloyal or “reporting them to the authorities.” Trying to go it alone with friends can be dangerous for everyone involved, especially if the friend is suicidal. It puts a burden on people they don’t need to have. Nobody is going to advise you to abandon your friend (in fact, the opposite - as an RD I often advised students to stay supportive of friends in crisis). The goal is to enlist the help of trained others.
Now, I do agree with some of her points about universities forcing students with mental health issues to go on leave. I think originally this may have been born of good intentions - sometimes the stressful environment of elite universities isn’t a great place for a suicidal student to be. But honestly, in recent years this has developed more into a risk management situation. No college wants to be the “suicide college,” and administrators are terrified of being in the news as the latest place someone has killed themselves. It tends to scare the parents and donors. (Duh.) So I do think that many colleges scramble to get students with mental health issues off campus just as much or more for liability reasons than for actual concern for the student themselves. In many cases, it may make students clam up or refuse to seek help because they are afraid they will be forced to leave.
She’s also write that mental illness is stigmatized and not well-understood, and thus sometimes people with mental illnesses are treated abominably by law enforcement officers. But that seems off-topic and unrelated to her original point. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get help - in fact, staying in therapy and potentially on medication may reduce your chances of unpleasant interactions with LEOs.
Appreciate the info/perspective, @julliet I’m not well versed in all of this, but have seen some of this second hand from a distance.
When I read it I didn’t see it as advice not to seek mental health help, but more that colleges, in general, are not very supportive of the second part that you mentioned, which is sticking with your friends after. The stigma and the way the advice is framed really can give that impression that it is like “reporting to the authorities”, even though it’s quite not. I think it sounds like an approach thing - where the sentence must continue and include something about also being supportive of your friend during and after, if possible on your end.
As far as therapy and her view on it, your info really helps contextualize there.