Reflections on Psychiatry, Therapy, and Mental Health

It is a reality that, like in all arts, the range of skill varies greatly amongst the community of therapy practitioners. One dimension of practice that is most commonly deficient in the less skilled is therapeutic discipline. Though therapy is an amorphous profession, somewhat like acting, within which the audience/patient experiences a seemingly free flow and naturalness to the process, the therapist/actor is very much aware of what she is doing and, despite the apparent

AI generated image of a student and humanistic mentor Don't get me wrong. I have a high respect for science and evidenced based contributions to our clinical work. On the other hand, too often have I run across clinicians who are cynical to those of us who work in the domaine of psychotherapy and related approaches to helping others that are difficult to pin down with scientific methods. Consider the framework of possible pushback should you run across an uber-scientist. G

I've always been bothered when patients view the value of their sessions with me in terms of time spent, rather than quality of experience. This happens most often with patients who are seeing me for med checks and are getting the counseling through another clinician. The other day this happened. My administrator came into the office after a patient visit reporting a complaint, 'the doctor only saw me for 15 minutes and the appointments are so expensive.' I knew that an