The whole profession got trashed in Newsweek this week. Some columnist named Sharon Begley read about, or spoke to a couple of guys who do research and they told her that clinicians don't pay attention to their research, so she decided that means that clinicians don't pay attention to science. She seemed to say we, especially those of us with experience, are a bunch of charlatans who make it up as we go along, based on our own whims and fantasies. Just another shot in the arm for those of us who are already over-regulated and under-paid.
She read an article that says that cognitive/behavioral therapy has been proven in the laboratory, but not all psychologists do cognitive/behavioral therapy all the time with all of our patients.
A few posts ago I wrote about how I reacted when I received the Guilford catalog. It's the same thing. There are books on their list full of research that has shown how to be helpful to someone who shows certain behavioral, emotional or physical symptoms. Now, none of those symptoms are exact, nor are they all indicative of the same underlying causes. The causes can be stress in the environment, in the family, in the sub-culture, or just in the person's mind. They can also be the result of an illness, perhaps a brain condition, or even some genetic factor. The truth is, and this is THE TRUTH, it is almost always an interaction of two, three or four of these factors.
And good clinician knows this. A good clinician takes what he has read in all these books, all the research, and research from more than just psychology, and puts together the best treatment he or she can, using all of his or her own experience of what works and how to do it.
And then, do you know what? Here is the reason we get trashed in Newsweek, because despite all of this science, experience, knowledge and the art of therapy -- there are cases when it all doesn't make much difference. We can't get right into someone's mind and make it change. We are not all Dr. Phil.
Sometimes we can do a great job: be helpful, healing, transformative,
Sometimes it bounces right off, rolls down the block and falls in the sewer.
But, none of these guys in the lab, these guys with the pills, the ones with the new machines have really demonstrated that they can do any better. You can look at the data.
3 comments:
I was just reading that article this evening and thinking about what you would say. I hope you are planning to write a letter to Newsweek!
By the way, I don't like their new format. Every article looks like an advertisement. I may just let our subscription lapse!
Thank heavens all clinicians are not like Dr. Phil.
So easy to make gross generalizations and so very wrong!
I used to respect Newsweek. But that was many years ago.
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