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ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Therapeutic Techniques that Aren't as Helpful

Jack Bragen
Friday September 05, 2014 - 01:45:00 PM

Most psychotherapists are probably not aware of this; however, many of the techniques that are used to diffuse anger can create a lot of anguish and dis-empowerment for the consumer. Many of the techniques that are used to get us to behave in a manner which is more convenient or more manageable are harmful for our internal thought structures. This is one reason that some consumers resent mental health practitioners. 

When someone's disability is used against them in a discussion it can look like a therapist is verbally outmaneuvering a mental health consumer. The therapist has a separate level of awareness that lies in back of what is being said openly. This dual awareness might utilize the same type of mental capacity that is used when people lie convincingly. 

When a consumer makes a complaint concerning the behavior of a therapist, the first thing out of the therapist's mouth is, "What specifically makes you think that?" And then the consumer may struggle to answer that question, and by the time they have an answer, the therapist is ready with another manipulating question, such as "What is it about that which makes you angry?" The focus remains on the internal workings of the patient's mind, and is kept off of the issue of the therapist's behavior. Thus, the consumer with their complaint is rendered impotent on a verbal level. 

Therapists may have an unfair verbal advantage over most mental health consumers--because of not being medicated and because of having training specifically for the purpose of giving them such an advantage. 

When a psychotherapist is adversarial toward the people they are treating, the result is therapy which is damaging to the consumer. This is so even if the therapist doesn't outwardly show that they don't like a particular client. 

I question the validity of some types of therapy, especially when the therapist believes they ought to ignore the patient's express wishes and complaints. Also, deep probing into the psyche of the patient is likely not helpful for someone who has a chronic mental illness caused by a bio-neurological imbalance. 

If the medical model of mental illness is accurate, then psychologists have no business getting into deep levels of a person and making changes which are based on their agendas and not those of the patient. 

The data that exists between the ears is vulnerable. If this were not so, there would be no such thing as post-traumatic stress. However, there are also subtler forms of psychological difficulties that can come from being inundated with the wrong messages, or that can come from inadvertently assuming erroneous assumptions. 

If you are in regular contact with people who tell you that you are "no good" then at some point, this message could be absorbed. If you are in contact with or supervised by people who assume that you are dumb or intellectually inferior, this message is going to sink in. 

In the past three decades since being diagnosed with a mental illness, I eventually discovered that therapists often had a warped perception of who I am. At times I have been perceived as a criminal. At other times, my lofty ambitions have been presumed to be delusions of grandeur. 

Therapists in a clinical setting are taught to perceive us a "subjects" and not as human beings. Assumptions are made concerning someone's lack of competency and mental inferiority even before the patient has opened his or her mouth to communicate. If someone shows talent at something, they are perceived as even more of a freak, or perhaps as an "idiot savant"--someone brilliant in one area but developmentally delayed otherwise. 

When I refused to answer a personal and inappropriate question of an intern therapist, he resorted to asking me if I was seeing my psychiatrist (the medical doctor who prescribes meds) regularly. Asking me that, in that context, was a form of intentional intimidation. 

In all fairness, most of my experiences in the mental health treatment system have been positive. And most of the mistreatment I have experienced has had some amount of subtlety and has been verbal rather than physical. 

I am speaking strictly from my own experiences, and these may differ from those of other mental health consumers.