Have we overestimated the effectiveness of psychotherapy?

IMO, “molecular” therapies, be it drug or dietetic/nutrient therapies makes psychosocial treatments/behavioral strategies irrelevant, granted the molecular and cellular basis of mental illness.

I like getting practical advice from my therapist.
She is easy to talk to.

I have had up to ten different therapist in the last 7 years. a few retired but most I just stopped seeing because I thought they were doing a terrible job. one therapist kept asking me how’d that make you feel? I quickly got annoyed and switched to a different clinic after the pdoc there said she wouldn’t see me anymore because I was a difficult case.

my current therapist is probably the best one yet she doesn’t ask stupid questions and usually helps me sort out my thoughts. she sometimes helps me get in sooner to see my psychiatrist if i’m having trouble.

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I have been sceptical of psychotherapy after less than good experiences with 2 trained and 1 untrained person . The two trained people pushed a “If you want to be good person line…” as though I was morally defective which I found quite abusive. I needed help to cope better with adverse experiences not to be subjected to moralising .

The untrained person who worked at the resource centre announced she was part of a small religious sect, and dumped me when I inadvertently upset her religious sensibilities.
She spent most of the sessions I had criticising me, and thus putting the boot in to my already fragile self esteem.

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Here’s some satire from the onion

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MRI scans that the brain repairs itself with a combination of meds and talking therapy needs to be more research and the two working more closer together. Was sort of one of frauds theories as well which was the hope of the future of pdocs.

I think we have, yes. Doesn’t seem to me like most doctors really know what they’re doing. They shovel people in and out of their offices as quickly as possible, and they have no real grasp of the deeper aspects of mental illness in general. They often lack sympathy, sensitivity, and a general sense of care and compassion. They’re not really there to help you heal, but rather to diagnose, drug, and stabilize you, so that you’re just well enough to get along. That’s the major pitfall of current psychotherapy, in my opinion, from what I’ve read from others and experienced myself with numerous psychologists, traditional and alternative alike.

I don’t think the field of psychology recognizes or is even willing to accept the existential layer of the human psyche, and I recently came across a great quote that really struck me. I don’t remember where I saw it or who said it, but it went something like, “Almost all forms of mental illness have an existential root.” The problem with psychotherapy, and especially psychiatry, is that we’re treated as machines with faulty wires, rather than as human beings with real traumas and real experiences.

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