by Lorriellah

Created on: November 29, 2010

It is not the case that everybody is in therapy but it certainly is the case that more and more people are seeking help for their problems and it appears to be forever increasing. This is rather alarming as it suggests that there are more stressors around causing people to feel the need to seek help or perhaps it reflects something else; that it is now deemed as more socially acceptable to have therapy.

-Mental Health diagnosis tabboo?-

There are many stessors around which can lead to people feeling overwhelmed with feelings of stress especially in this current financial climate it is, however, not the only reason why people seek therapy. People are in therapy for all sorts of issues relationship counselling being a huge one as well as therapy for well known disorders such as Bipolar disorder OCD and multiple personality disorder.

A diagnosis of a mental disorder once meant that you should be ashamed of yourself and not tell anybody except your nearest and dearest. People would look at you differently and would see the illness an within your control and 'your fault' unlike physical illness. Now, however, mental health is seen as a less shameful topic and people are more open about what mental health diagnoses they may have.

Over the past few years there has been vast steps in improving mental health care from trying to move away from mental institutions and instead focussing more on care in the community this has made the subject less tabboo; patients who are suffering from a mental disorder are no longer locked away and never seen until they are 'cured'. Due to the fact that it is less tabboo people are more open about talking through their problems and therefore are more likely to seek help and partake in therapy.

- What is therapy? What does it involve?-
Therapy does not just mean sitting on a couch and telling a shrink about your relationship with your parents. Instead there are so many vastly different ways of recieving counselling and therapy. With counselling alone there are different strands including:

* Psychoanalysis
* Person centered counselling
* Humanistic counselling

They all are based around various concepts and ideas all aimed towards finding the answers to an individual's pressing issues. Counselling, however isn't enough for some people and other therapies are needed one very popular form of therapy is cognitive behavioural therapy. This is where the psychologist works with the individual looking at both the behaviour patterns and the thought processes that they have. The aim is to try to change their behaviour and this should then break the cycle and change their thought patterns too.

Therapy is being seen as an every day thing, more and more people are undergoing therapy and I think that there are various factors involved in this. The main factors being how the lifestyles we live now create more pressure and stress leading to us having feelings of conflict and doubt and also the way society's attitude has changed- it is now deemed as socially acceptable to be undergoing therapy so much so that it is almost fashionable.

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