cheryl
Administrator
Staff member
Therapy that sticks - Aeon
Quick-fix psychotherapies have been hailed as the gold standard. But depth therapies can be far more enduring and profound
ven as more celebrities and athletes speak out about their mental health challenges and the stigma lessens, a mental health crisis looms – especially in the United States. More than 45 million adults – one in five – experience mental illness, and one in 25 are diagnosed with a serious mental illness. The mental health of American children has never been worse, and suicides and drug overdoses are increasing, contributing to the longest sustained decline in life expectancy in more than a century, even as the opposite is true throughout much of the rest of the world.
Juxtaposed with this mental health crisis, news media and headlines tout the benefits of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), explicitly recommended as ‘evidence-based’ and said to work rapidly, especially when combined with drugs such as antidepressants or mood stabilisers. Varieties of CBT apply to a host of different diagnoses: dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for personality disorder; cognitive processing therapy (CPT) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); interpersonal therapy (IPT) for mood disorder. The list goes on: 50 per cent of therapists now define themselves as fitting in the cognitive-behavioural lane, compared with none 50 years ago. People seem to be absorbing these messages with more of us on medication than ever; antidepressant use alone went up 64 per cent from 1999 to 2014. The increase is so steep that an estimated 13 per cent of the US population now take the drugs.
Quick-fix psychotherapies have been hailed as the gold standard. But depth therapies can be far more enduring and profound
ven as more celebrities and athletes speak out about their mental health challenges and the stigma lessens, a mental health crisis looms – especially in the United States. More than 45 million adults – one in five – experience mental illness, and one in 25 are diagnosed with a serious mental illness. The mental health of American children has never been worse, and suicides and drug overdoses are increasing, contributing to the longest sustained decline in life expectancy in more than a century, even as the opposite is true throughout much of the rest of the world.
Juxtaposed with this mental health crisis, news media and headlines tout the benefits of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), explicitly recommended as ‘evidence-based’ and said to work rapidly, especially when combined with drugs such as antidepressants or mood stabilisers. Varieties of CBT apply to a host of different diagnoses: dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for personality disorder; cognitive processing therapy (CPT) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); interpersonal therapy (IPT) for mood disorder. The list goes on: 50 per cent of therapists now define themselves as fitting in the cognitive-behavioural lane, compared with none 50 years ago. People seem to be absorbing these messages with more of us on medication than ever; antidepressant use alone went up 64 per cent from 1999 to 2014. The increase is so steep that an estimated 13 per cent of the US population now take the drugs.