Recently, I
read a tweet by health reporter Andre Picard saying “You don’t need a therapist
to get effective therapy” and linking to a New York Times article about the website Mood Gym, an interactive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) program for depressed individuals. Picard retweeted, apparently without critical examination, the
dubious conclusion that, since health insurance will not cover face-to-face therapy
for someone without a diagnosable disorder, “there is a clear need for the
online version”.
Say what?
Say what?
Isn’t an “online version” of “face-to-face” an oxymoron, Mr. Picard?
Right
after this a client came into my office with a prescription from her doctor for CBT to treat “depression and anxiety”. The client is a young mother from another
country whose friends and extended family are thousands of miles away and whose
children go to school in a foreign language.
Although she has two university diplomas, after her second maternity
leave she had to enroll in University classes to qualify for a job in an area for
which she was not previously trained, then for financial reasons accepted a very
stressful office job where the boss’s management style would fit anyone’s
definition of “toxic”. After a year of
this, she started to despair; hence the visit to the doctor.
The woman told
me she was surprised that, after just ten minutes in consultation with a
resident in her twenties, she was walking away with a medical diagnosis,
drug prescription and referral for CBT.
I listened to her outrage at the label and the doctor’s swift pathologizing
of her normal reaction to an abnormally stressful situation. We laughed about the young doctor diagnosing her
as having an adaptive disorder as opposed to her having a life that was hard to
adapt to.
Are Picard and other health reporters touting their shallow nonsense to promote “mental health” or to get rid of talk therapy? One has to wonder. Mood Gym, the “online version” of CBT under discussion, has been shown to be no better than other informational websites at preventing depression whereas face-to-face therapy and a therapeutic alliance with the right therapist has been proven over and over again to be unsurpassed in its curative effect on all kinds of diagnoses. Picard has retweeted other “studies” purporting to show the uselessness of non-medical approaches to psychotherapy without apparently studying them or responding to those who do.
Are Picard and other health reporters touting their shallow nonsense to promote “mental health” or to get rid of talk therapy? One has to wonder. Mood Gym, the “online version” of CBT under discussion, has been shown to be no better than other informational websites at preventing depression whereas face-to-face therapy and a therapeutic alliance with the right therapist has been proven over and over again to be unsurpassed in its curative effect on all kinds of diagnoses. Picard has retweeted other “studies” purporting to show the uselessness of non-medical approaches to psychotherapy without apparently studying them or responding to those who do.
Successful
psychotherapy can integrate many techniques and ways of working with people, including
CBT, but it is always, first about rekindling the warmth of human connection in
people who need that warmth. It is human, personal and real.
Jesus asked:
“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a
serpent instead?” Maybe no such fathers could be found then, but there are now “health experts” among us who, when asked for therapy, would apparently send their
depressed sons to their computers.
(When my client left today, she was visibly relieved; maybe not cured, but definitely showing signs of feeling better)