I can't tell if you're being serious but medically certified psychologists are the most qualified to answer that question. Therapy is a medical science, but every layperson seems to think they have enough knowledge to comment on what it is or whether it's needed.
> but every layperson seems to think they have enough knowledge to comment on what it is or whether it's needed.
Ah, the "leave it to the experts" trope.
Giving that responsibility to someone else is the same as relying on a guru or a religious personality to tell you what to believe & do.
If you look into psychology & related fields, there are different traditions & approaches. A practitioner will go to school for a few years learning a particular curriculum. What is to say that that curriculum & approach is correct for you? That takes a leap of faith.
The workings of the human brain & the dynamics of personality is actually not fully known. There is a lot of progress being made and that knowledge is something that you have access to. Hopefully you can have an independent & thoughtful mind to make your own decision.
There's also issues with the Pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical companies want to make money and making money means selling drugs. Hence it is in their best interest to have people regularly take their drugs.
Also notice that natural remedies, used for most of the history of life, are discredited. Why? The Pharmaceutical industry has an interest in controlling the channel of your medicine. They cannot profit from natural remedies that are commodities.
A side effect of many anti-depressants is suicide, yet these drugs are heavily advertised and prescribed. Billions of dollars are being made every year. Notice that there are ulterior motives that do not relate to your health.
Btw, Pharmaceutical companies also visit doctor offices and have a symbiotic relationship with the doctors. Some doctors are ethical & some doctors are not...
Psychotherapy is still at a woo-woo stage in its scientific development. Primarily because nobody has a real clue as to what connects the "mind" to the "brain" at the fundamental functional level.
A century after Freud, Jung and a host of their 'intellectual' descendants, "therapy" might as well be a pseudoscience as much as it is (claimed to be) science. Sure, modern day variations may appear quite different in practice than what was being done a few decades ago, but just because "it works" (for some) does not mean we understand the working of the mind well enough to call it a science.
A (poor) analogy might be like saying that just because a 3 year old kid can use the iPad to play games (cause-and-effect learned from touching, moving the device), he/she understands the workings of the ARM processor inside. Or even the code that game runs on.
> Not sure what you are getting at by claiming it isn't.
Semantics & accuracy.
I'll appeal to authority for you...
“Some doctors are scientists – just as some politicians are scientists – but most are not,”
"Indeed, most doctors are incapable of critically appraising an article. They have never been trained to do so."
Richard Smith - Editor British Medical Journal
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC428500/
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc are sciences.
Pediatrics, Oncology, Counseling are practices.
The technique will use science, however they are not a science in themselves. Even though the practices are "based on science", sometimes there issues with the initial studies that we later find out in later studies.
Dealing with the inner working of reality is hard. There's lots of unseen complexity. The unknowns are still unknown. Science often lags practical application because it requires fundamental understanding, capital, accredited scientists, & peer review. E.g. we knew how to create catapults before we had Newtonian Physics.
Also, be careful because the definition of "based on science" has become heavily politicized & driven to sell something to the public. Monsanto created GM crops that are "safe" "based on science". We are now finding out that their crops are wreaking havoc to the ecosystem. e.g. the Bees & Monarch Butterfly populations have collapsed.
In the 1950s, Cigarettes were deemed "based on science". Asbestos was deemed safe "based on science".
I speak because I do know a renowned medical practitioner & researcher. I have a glimpse on how the sausage is made.
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> Many of the so-called 'swamis' of the world would be considered mentally ill in the Western world.
That is more of a condemnation of the Western world. Locking someone up just because they are not "gainfully employed" and "another brick in the wall" is hardly healthy.
> People didn't have it 'figured out' hundreds or thousands of years ago.
We don't now either. Look at how humans have impacted the environment in such a short time. Also look at our pointless & expensive wars that we engage in. Look at the obesity epidemic. Feel the cold unhappiness & judgement of modern western culture.
> Hundreds or thousands of years ago people use to cut out other people's tongues or raid each other's homes to kidnap slaves.
We still do. People are still murdered, oppressed, silenced. Slavery still exists, more so now then ever.
> The human race has done some horrible things to each other over time and I don't subscribe to the idea that somehow we should be looking to those generations for advice on mental wellness.
It's not so much the time period or ethnicity. It's more about the attitude we have toward each each other. There are good and bad people now. There were good and bad people then. History teaches us on what works and what doesn't work.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
- George Santayana
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Note: I find it amusing that my previous comment, which basically says "think for yourself", have a "critical view of things", and "understand causality", is downvoted on HN.
