Wellbeing4me® Clinic arrives in Wollongong!
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March 29, 2023
March 27, 2019
It is difficult to be up-to-date in modern times – with the latest and greatest – on anything or any topic for that matter.
There is so much out there – as we live in the information age.
It appears as an observer, that there’s too much white noise and it’s affecting us all.
Much of what’s on the Internet, particularly in therapy, including therapists and coaching – often is not effective and not doing its job.
Much of the counselling out there is stop-gap and band-aid solutions to a broader, systemic problem.
Life is becoming more complex and the training of counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists is not focusing enough on the pressures of modern life on families, individuals and our community.
Most current mental-health professionals aren’t trained in systemic practice. Social Workers are, and some systemic counsellors/psychotherapists.
Whilst there is some training in some other professional qualifications, it is not ample enough, given our current changeable modern environment we live and work in, so counsellors and all mental health professionals need to adjust their training accordingly.
Training generally doesn’t cover how we are connected to the world-at-large, the community resources, how to tap into external resources for and on behalf of the client, how Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are changing our collective psyches and where a client is at on the scale of wellness.
Wellness, being the opposite of illness.
Whilst some professionals are trained in looking at the broader picture, the programs within training disciplines are not focused enough on the changing growing landscape across social media, the social lives of our clients, the use of technology and additionally how this is changing people’s lives and mental health.
There are a great many positive things that technology brings, though there are many matters that we choose to remain in denial about. Freud would be fascinated and perplexed by us now.
As an example, there are over 500 different types of therapy – and the list is growing.
I’ve been watching another growing trend, that Life Coaching and Business Coaching is becoming more popular, and it’s not necessarily being delivered by the most well-trained professionals. See the following article for more information you need to know before hiring a coach of any kind.
As well, see Caleb Storkey’s article on What Makes a Good Life Coach here.
What works in counselling?
In the Talking Cure paper by McFadzean (2005), it is suggested that there are many factors that contribute to effective counselling, good outcomes and healing for the client. Much of which, is outside the therapist’s control.
A large portion of a positive therapeutic experience is to do with the therapist alliance, their ability to develop a professional relationship with you and for a client to feel safe.
Now if the government-funded services with Medicare: Better Access program, as provided by Psychologists and Social Workers, were doing its job, then we wouldn’t have a ‘mental health crisis’, would we?
This may be a bold statement – and there’s much complexity within this claim – though if the Better Access scheme was as good as it purports to be, then there’d be less mental health crisis, not more. It also would not be ever increasing.
In addition, professionals would be trained in the modern-day stressors that are impacting upon our clients on a minute-to-minute, day-to-day, week-to-week basis.
Clients would know they could trust the work of their counsellor, psychologist or social worker.
The amount of times I have heard that counselling hasn’t worked for clients is astounding.
In a perfect world, a client would be assured in knowing that if they went to a particular type of counselling, that it would ‘just work’.
You see, it appears we’ve put the cart before the horse.
Psychologists and Social Workers everywhere can’t keep up with the demand from the community in many places.
As a professional who doesn’t work with Medicare, I hear from colleagues in psychology that their books are full to overflowing.
Everywhere you turn in our Australian community, people suggest ‘go to therapy’, ‘see a psychologist for your problem’ and that ‘there is a mental health crisis’.
So, I propose a different solution to this problem.
Often, we need to ‘think outside the box’ to come up with new solutions to solve old problems.
We just cannot solve an issue in the same way it was created.
So, here’s a big claim – the Psychologist and Social Worker rebate is not working.
Our lives are more complex, our lives are not always in context when seeking individual or group support with a therapist.
The problem is – that our clients need to be taken in context.
In other words, a counsellor needs to consider you and your unique circumstances when counselling you.
No client is an island and their problems do not exist in isolation. We only need to see the flux in relation to politics around the world, that the world is rapidly changing.
Our news cycles are 24 hours, 7 days a week. Many people know about news before people who lead our countries do. Professional associations cannot often keep up with this demand.
References
Department of Health (2012). Department of Health: Better access to mental health care: fact sheet for patients: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/mental-ba-fact-pat
McFadzean, D M (2005). What really matters: The foundation of effective counselling and psychotherapy: http://talkingcure.co.uk/articles/whatreallymatters.pdf
Smith. S (2014). Sydney Morning Herald: Anyone can be a life coach, so is it time to ask: who is really coaching you?: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/anyone-can-be-a-life-coach-so-is-it-time-to-ask-who-is-really-coaching-you-20140618-zsd44.html
Storkey, C (2014). Caleb Storkey Social Media Agency: What Makes a Good Life Coach? http://calebstorkey.com/what-makes-a-good-life-coach/
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