Counsellors and therapists

If you've got a biochemical imbalance, you can not talk yourself out of it and you can not behavior modify yourself out of it. It's like suggesting you talk yourself out of cancer or diabetes. Sometimes medication is the best route a person can take. Maybe it's because of the line of work I do, but I see medicaiton as a beneficial treatment for many people. It's dependent on each person's individual needs.

I went to a therapist and it was massively benifical to me. It's also led me to becoming a psychologist, clinical or forensic I don't yet know but it was the best thing I've ever done. It's gotta be your decision though.

It's certainly true to some extent that what you put in you get out but as one of the greatest therapists who ever lived said, "There's no such thing as a resistant client, only an inflexible therapist." I've met therapists with every qualification under the sun and they are absolutely useless, they couldn't get a clock to change, and I've met people with no PHD's and they're the best therapists alive. And that's it really, it's truly about getting lucky and finding a talented therapist. It's not like going to a GP or surgeon, where they can look up their medical journal and give you the right drug, change can only come about through a sort of symbiotic relationship between client and therapist. They can't change you, they can only provide new and greater insight, understanding, motivation to change and at best open up new choices for you to make and then it's up to you to take action. After you're presented with new ways of thinking and new ways of viewing the world, it's only you who can ultimately live your life. Most people going into therapy feel as if their brain is running them, that they're not in control of their lives, how the feel, etcetera. Good therapy gives you the understanding that you do run your brain, all the time, even if you feel out of control, and it gives you the tools to run your brain. It moves you from "driven" to "driver" if you will and where you drive to is ultimately up to you. I firmly believe human beings make the best decision they feel they can at any given time, even if it seems to an outside observer that their decisions are extremely negative and destructive, so if a therapist can really provide, in the mind of the client, better choices the client will take them.

I'm sorry but that's complete wrong, and one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read. Chemical imbalances in the brain are not random occurances, and they are most certainly not diseases. That's like claiming alcoholism is a disease because it causes a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Take depression for example. People talk about depression as resulting from a chemical imbalance but that's getting it completely backwards. Firstly, depression is not a disease, it's not something somebody gets. Depression like any emotion is a process. Therefore a person should be thought to be depressing rather then getting depressed, as if it was like a virus that you contract. Your emotions are the result of your thinking and your behaviour. Change your thought processes, and thus your behaviour, and you change how you feel. It's cause and effect. The chamical imbalance that one will find in the brain of a manically depressed paitent is exactly the type of brain chemistry you should find in a person who is continually depressing over an extended period of time. I reccommend a book called "Choice Theory" by a psychiatrist called William Glasser for a much more detailed explanation. And besides, the ability to change a persons behaviour by altering their thinking (and that determines how and what a person feels) is the basis of psychology. And psychology is a science.

Medication can and should be used in serious cases but medication never solves mental disorders. It's useful to stabalise a paitent but it then gets in the way of actually altering a persons behaviour due to the side effects. You cannot solve any mental disorder with medication alone and that's a big problem because most psychiatrists, and some psychologists, both in the forensic and clinincal fields, aren't really that interested in working with paitents or offenders unless they can just whip out their prescription pad. Mental disorders can only be solved cognitively and it takes alot of time. Behavioural and emotional problems are alot easier to solve in the hands of a skilled therapist and medication is never needed at all.

Educate you?

I am telling you that most narcotic classed medications will not change your personality. They may make you think more clearly and enable you to continue a thought for more than a split second, but your actual personality will not change. A person on anti depressants may not bawl everytime there is a commercial on TV, but his/her personality does not change.

Interesting about your friends, I know absolutely nobody who is on any narcotic classed medications that would agree with that statement and I know several people who refused to take medications for that reason. They somehow thought they would either change, not be the same person, or be 'drugged into compliance' (as a dear friend described it). Once they realized they'd either shoot themselves or try that pill, they ALL said they wished they had given the medication a try many years earlier. For some reason a bullet in the head didn't seem that appealing anymore --- must have been that other personality ?

That is absolute crap, Butters.

No. 1, medication can be extremely helpful even if it is not a life or death situation. In fact, it should never get to the life or death part anyway.

No. 2, what side effects alter a persons behaviou in a way that it gets in the way of psychological therapy? You too must think that meds will 'change' a persons personality. Which is bullcrap. I bet you everything that most people who have gone on certain meds you'd never know they did unless they told you. Thus, it never changed their personality.

No. 3, chemical imbalances are absolutely positively existant. Medications will help a chemical imbalance. Talking about ones childhood doesn't.

No. 4, alcoholism IS a disease.

Too many mantra humming psychologists are sooo freaking anti-drugs they rather have someone uncontrollably miserable then to simply get the patients brain chemistry in check.

I had a therapist tell me to doodle pictures or tap my foot to keep my focus. As I wasn't receptive to her suggestions she told me that my line of work could not possibly keep anyones attention and that there was nothing to be done. What the ****? It's that crap that makes therapists look like idiots and people who really need them less likely to go in the first place, not to mention to ever go back.


This discussion makes me sick.

OMg!!!!!!!!


You sound like one of THEM. One of those people who studied people with mental disorders from books and essays and perhaps have seen one during residency in a mental institution. Doubt you ever got to understand one.

First let me say, I don't post much right now, because some of the health issues that I am going through. So "Hi" to everyone. now...

Depression can be a diease.. it's called Major Depression. It can be brought on by a chemical imbalance. I've read before as two types of depression. Organic and Situational depression

Also, Depression can be one of the symptoms of another diease.

from an article:

"http://neurologicalillness.suite101....hat_causes_it_

So, we have two causes of depression...I think. One is Situational Depression which is a depression that occurs in response to a specific set of circumstances.

and

Organic or chemical depression: can "occur when the brain and nervous system (part of the internal person) become disorganized in some way and can no longer function normally. "

of course I might be leaving some thing out.

Over the past few years, I've learned more about MS than I care to. And one of the things i found out was that MS can cause depression (both situational and organic).
for instance one the medicines I have to take, one of the side effects is depression. I think that would be classified as organic/chemical depression.


Depression can be an illness: Major/chemical depression is caused by something going wrong in your brain.

btw, they call it so many different things..it's like Manic Depressive/Bi-Polar. I think they are both the same thing.


On that note, therapy can help, if you are willing to work with doctor and work on you.

I see one, I have been for awhile. He is helping me learn to deal with what is going on in my life now.
a few years ago, I would have been major basket case.

Definitely true. A depression can be caused by an inherited chemical inbalance in the brain. Which maybe hasn't been a problem for a long time, but can be fueled when the person's going through a rough time. And from then it's pretty much a vicious cricle where stress makes the chemical inbalance worse and the chemical inbalance makes stress worse. In which case anti-depressants can be very helpful to get a person out of that circle.

A depression generally is much more than just someone who's not quite happy with what he's doing and I think therapy / medication can be quite helpful and in some cases necessary.

"Sorry to hear life is so unbearable. It's all your fault, by the way."

You just couldn't be more wrong. If this is the prevailing attitude, it's no wonder people don't seek treatment more often.

Of course they can, and unfortunately alot of cases do get to a life and death situation. The only time I think anti-depressants should be used is in extreme cases such as people who survive their own suicide attempts or people who are clearly likely to attempt suicide. But it should only be the first step and coupled with lots of therapy. Anti-depressants only ever treat the symptoms, not the cause.


The side-effects are far too many to list here but I'll give you a couple of examples. Anti-depressants very frequently kill a persons sex drive which leads to enourmous problems. They can also numb a person to all other feelings which often drives people to hurt themselves. People can become addicted to them and start to believe they can only ever not depress unless they're on meds, which is completely wrong.

Trying to treat paranoid schizophrenics on meds is the most frustrating thing you can imagine. You teach them how to control the images they are making in their heads, the things those imaginary figures are saying to them, the way they're saying the things their saying, basically how to take conscious control of what's going on inside their heads and when they do it the results are amazing. You then see them a few days later and they've forgotten everything you taught them and they are back out of control because they are doped off their heads on medication. You can't get through and give the control back to the individual while they're doped up by psychiatrist who are merely hoping to reduce the symptoms of PS.

I don't think that at all. Personality is fluid, not rigid. Nobody has a static personality, it changes constantly over time and depending upon what situation you're in and the people you're around. When you go on meds, you're still you, you're still the same you you were before you went on them, you might, if you're lucky, be a bit happier, which is fantastic.

Where did I disagree with any of that? Of course chemical imbalances exists, but they are not things that just come out of nowhere, they are diseases people get, they are the result of your thought processes and your behavioural activity. Try this, think of your happiest memory, an really get into it an experience it full. If you did chances are you're feeling quite happy right now. You have a "chemical imbalance" in your brain right now which is causing you to feel an emotion called pleasure, and what caused you to feel that way? What caused you to have a chemical imbalance?

Medication can definitely change a persons brain chemistry, but if the person continues to focus on everything that's going wrong in their life, and they encant those fellings, if you will, as well as other things, then it doesn't matter what or how many meds they're on, they wont do a damn thing because the cause of the problem has gone untreated.

And I'm most certainly not a psychiatrist. Paying some asshole 200 euros an hour to relive every terrible experience in your life for 10 years in the hopes that you can understand why you're not happy with your life right now is the greatest load of crap I've ever heard. And even if you come to an understanding of why you're depressed, it doesn't change anything, you simply understand why you'e depressed, not what to do about it.

No it's not. Go into a hospital and look at a young girl being treated for cancer, or a guy dying of AIDS and then go down the steet and look at a guy getting wasted and try an tell me they are the same thing. A little girl dying of cancer has no choice and no control over her illness, an alcoholic does.

That's crap, that is. Psychiatrists are far too ready to dish out meds because it quick and easy for them and they make a shot load of money from it. Psychologists are actually interested in solving people's psychological problems and treating the cause of their chemical imbalances.

That's a load of boolocks all right. And that's what I said in my origional post, some psychiatrists and psychologists (do you know what type of therapist she was?) are completely incompotent when it comes to working with paitents and I've certainly had my fair share of similarly ridiculous experiences with therapists like that. Like I said before, in many ways you've just gotta be lucky and come across a talented therapist.

Somebody's got issues.