How Did We Get To This Point?

Psychology is in trouble on so many fronts. Beside the obvious, with on-demand texting, email, chat, forums, blogs and such, people do not have to schedule appointments, wait, be exposed to antiquated talk therapy, and quite frankly disappointment for a system failed. When the first words from a client whose child is in distress at school is: "Do you take insurance?" Something is wrong. Since when did insurance become a screening process to efficient and effective mental health.

As a Certified Personal Fitness Trainer, Consultant for the Anger Management Training Institute, and Certified Addictions Specialist with The Academy, founded by Harvard University's College of Medicince-Division on Addictions, I am totally frustrated. In my twenty years of study, research, and practice, I have never seen such disappointment not only in the system, but the conditioned effect the system, through its dysfunction has left in its wake.

Mental health is a skill, it is not a disorder in and of its self. As in all skills, if you are week in technique, form, and practice, the system breaks down. When people are looking more toward Pain Management Clinics (e.g., get fixed quick) dispensaries, there is a problem. The best pill in the world for most mental health conditions requires 45 minutes to swallow, and that is exercise.

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders TR-IV (2000), anger experience and expression is not a diagnosable mental disorder, and is not applicable to managed care and third party billing. Unfortunately, a few therapists cross ethical lines, diagnose alte
ative conditions, utilize such billing practices, and thereby treat the inability to manage the anger-response as a mental disorder. How did this happen and when did we get to the point where people invest more in gym equipment than maximizing their personal and social power of control?