Therapy should work. So why doesn’t it?

One of the worst things that I see on an intake form is that a client has been to multiple therapists over the course of several years. It’s hard enough to find anyone with openings right now, but to find a therapist only for the treatment not to work… I’ll never be able to comprehend that level of hopelessness. Especially when you’ve given up hope on everything else.

Unfortunately, the training that psychotherapists receive in graduate school is basic. The basic understanding of depression. The basic understanding of anxiety. The basic struggles of life. The schooling touches on things like suicide, psychosis, developmental needs of kids and teens, but rarely goes in depth at most programs. We’re taught that these are things that only specialists should handle, but never shown who those people are, or how to become them. This has led to a crisis in the mental field where there is no one to treat the clients most desperately in need.

I began specializing in treating suicidal teens by accident. In my clinical internships and later jobs, most of my clients were teens that had experienced severe trauma and institutionalization that led to self-harming and suicidal actions. I often did not agree with the way treatment was given to these kiddos, and was able to see that it also wasn’t working. So I sat down with them and asked why. Let me tell you, they talked. Long and hard and loud about everything that they HADN’T gotten. I was able to start building a system from these conversations to better aid the mental health care that I was providing and make sure it would actually do what it was supposed to.

This isn’t the way that it should be though. It shouldn’t have taken years worth of informal research to figure out a way to help someone with a very common problem. Keeping people safe should have been the first thing we were taught. It wasn’t. The change will come from requiring schools to have courses specifically about maintaining safety in a non-damaging way. It’s completely possible to do this. The regulations are actually set by the state, so this is the time to call your congressman. I’m serious, they actually have the ability to fix this mess.

To any of my former clients that may read this, thank you so much for your support in helping me better understand the problem. Your honesty has saved lives. In some of the hardest times of your lives you took on something a little harder, and in doing so have helped so many others. I will be forever grateful for having had a chance to know you.

-Cally