As she puts it, there’s a shortage of therapists in general, a shortage of therapists that take insurance, and a shortage of therapists with specialized training. None of that will change without significant changes to the mental health system, and even if it did, we still wouldn’t have enough therapists, especially in rural areas.
There are quite a few ideas to consider before you talk to someone you love that I highly encourage you to read. The last thing you want to do is create a situation where they feel judged or stigmatized but it happens more often than it should. (It should never happen, we aren’t even close to that.)
However, there is one thing that I have found really helps whenever someone is talking about their own mental health issues, or feeling embarrassed about considering therapy for themselves and it’s quoted right there in this article:
“If you’ve gone to therapy, you can share your experiences with them, too. It can help to let them know they aren’t alone in seeking help. “
Unfortunately, whether therapy is effective for your child, or for yourself as an adult, depends on a number of factors. Finding someone you can trust is an obvious one, and sometimes a real struggle. Elsewhere in the article, Melinda talks about the child not currently being in a traumatic situation, notably one interviewee who was seeing a therapist for depression while also being sexually abused at home. She knew she could talk about that, so the therapy was doomed from the start.
Sometimes I believe we look at mental health treatments like therapy and dismiss them because “it didn’t work” without considering all of the outside factors that can influence whether it works or not.
There’s no language in this belief system for “some other person decided to hurt you for no reason at all and it had nothing to do with you”. There can’t be any language for that, because the entire system is self-centered.
The world isn’t. So please stop telling people who have suffered real harm that it’s all just lessons to learn, that simply excuses away harmful behavior, provides overly simple “fixes” for mental health issues, and places the blame for it square on the victim. That’s no way to support anyone.
When you grow up constantly on the lookout for the “next” danger that was coming your way, or constantly worried about your own safety as a result of other people’s moods and actions, that doesn’t just stop when you become an adult. And, when you cannot turn it off, that can easily roll right into an anxiety issue.
And, I can also tell you firsthand that even when you do the therapy and some of the other suggestions from the article below, it can come back during especially stressful times.
Like now.
So, if this describes you, you’re not alone.
We can, and should, do everything we can to get out good information and share the truth about mental health issues. We can, and should, share our own stories of the mental health issues we’ve survived, especially those of us who have had many of these issues due to the trauma we suffered.
But that will never be enough for some people. Knowing the truth about these issues, and knowing what people need in terms of non-stigmatizing support won’t be enough to change their actual behavior. The very topic(s) will make them uncomfortable and they will act out of that discomfort instead of relying on what they know. They will put their own comfort above any consideration of how stigmatizing their actions and words are because they simply cannot handle even the slightest discomfort in their lives.
That is their weakness, not ours.
