We need to take a broader view of mental health treatment and look beyond the medical model.
We’ve been stuck in an individualized treatment model. For a crisis this large and pervasive, we need to look beyond traditional psychological and psychiatric training.
Traditionally, mental health treatment is highly individualized. You meet with a prescriber. They prescribe medicine to adjust your individual mood and symptoms. There’s no change to the environment. The change is helping you adjust to an environment that does not meet your needs
If you are lucky, you may even get an individual therapist but let’s be honest, licensed therapists (especially those who took insurance) were in short supply before the pandemic. Even if you can get an appointment it may not be at a convenient time.
Therapy appointments are usually weekly or every other week, meaning if the only appointment available is 10am Tuesdays, you miss work/school/whatever 10am every Tuesday. It’s a commitment.
Not to discourage anyone b/c therapy can be extremely helpful but I want to be realistic
But both therapy and medication work on an individual level. The person needs to change, not the environment.
The message is that the person is the issue, not the chaos surrounding them.
I talk a lot with clients about the importance of the person-environment fit. If there is a mismatch between the person’s characteristics and the environment, it yields distress. The person can change to fit the environment or the environment can adapt to the person’s needs.
If the mismatch is not addressed, that’s when you see distress. Some distress can be handled through coping - both healthy and less ideal methods - but sometimes that’s not enough.
So what about now? We are seeing massive increases in mental, emotional, and cognitive distress that cannot be adequately addressed by the current individualistic system. Simply put, there is a supply and demand issue. Demand for us is high and there’s not enough supply.
This has also led to a decrease in the number of mental health professionals taking insurance because frankly, there’s sufficient supply of people willing to self pay for services right now. There’s no need to take insurance, other than feeing a moral imperative to.
The conceptualization of mental health treatment needs to change. It’s not just the person, it’s also the environment and how they interact. And when the environment is chaotic, unpredictable, and does not support you, you should be distressed.
Right now much of the distress individuals feel is due to environmental factors. We can’t intervene individually. We need to intervene on a larger scale.
We need to rebuild relationships.
We need to rebuild community.
We need to remember our humanity.
So let’s look at larger interventions. We can all help.
I hate saying this because it sounds so cliche, but show grace.
You don’t know what the other person has gone through/is going through.
Trauma is not a competition.
Say hi to someone
Strike up a conversation
Contact an old friendly
Reignite those connections
We have to work together as a community to move on. But to do this, we need to reignite the sense of community.
Let’s stop fighting and start listening. And let’s listen to listen, not listen to respond and fight.