by Jishi Santos

Created on: August 15, 2008

Self help resources versus professional counselling.

The first time I went to professional counselling to appease those around me who thought I needed it,when I knew that I didn't,I thought that I would kill two birds with the one stone. Firstly, get a quick fix and secondly get these people, mainly my first wife, off my back. Well what an education this was. Firstly, I waited in a dingy waiting room with quite depressed looking people all around me. Secondly the counseller was late and thirdly, he assured me that this was to be the first of ten $80 sessions if I were to get well, and non of them were reclaimable under the government health scheme. Of course when you are a little anxious you are going to blurt your problems out, but for an hour he just sat there, feet up on his desk, with very little reaction except, "Tell me more"! At the end of this first session he was interested in my parents personal life. I'm thinking to myself what relevance has this? Needless to say I never went back to him but sometime later tried another. After three sessions he said, "Wow you have a geat life, wish I could do the same you dont need to see someone like me". Luckily this guy had some common sense and didn't just assume that I was another lost cause to make money out of. Oh, and by the way that first shrink told me that I needed calming down and prescribed Serepax which really spaced me out and scattered my brain. It is the same with Prozac and all these anti depressants. What the shrinks dont realise is that for how ever long you are on these poison pills it takes that long again to get off them. Also they know nothing of the side effects. Maybe they are on some incentive scheme by the drug companies to prescribe and sell. It's true; a free vacation in Hawaii if you can sell so much.

I believe in one basic tenant having been a teacher in Australia and overseas in Africa and New Guinea and also in the blind, autistic and muliply handicapped field for over twenty years. It is this, that every human being needs to have some level of self esteem and confidence to move on. Once that level of low self esteem sets in it is hard to climb out, so here is my suggestion. If if I had enough money and was in the field of rehabilitating depressed people in society and at the worst extreme was trying to prevent suicide, I would try to show people how good life is and its not worth wasting a minute of it. No therapy couch would I use but buy a huge block of land to walk in and interact

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>