Beware of mental health ‘gurus’ promising quick f ixes that just don’t exist
Psychologist warns that the pursuit of wellness has become a commodity
A RENOWNED clinical psychologist and best-selling author has warned against mental health ‘gurus’ promising ‘quick fixes’.
In an interview to mark World Mental Health Day this week, Dr Tony Bates said our increased awareness around mental health has seen it ‘become a commodity, and a commodity is something you can always make money from in some way’.
The psychologist – who has just released a book about his career written in the context of his own mental hardships – told the Irish Mail on Sunday, ‘There are all kinds of people telling us what we should feel and what we should do, and people telling us why we’re not feeling those things and how we can fix it. There is an enormous amount of simplistic, superficial thinking around mental health, but the truth is that there are very few, if any, quick fixes’.
The Cork-born psychologist, who has written several books on coping with depression, was speaking not just of influencers and celebrities such as American actress and wellness entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, but of qualified mental health practitioners too.
‘If you find any therapist or guru that promises to sort out your abuse or your bad memories of traumas in six sessions, just walk away,’ he said.
‘We’d love to have universal standardised ways of treating everybody who feels depressed, but your depression and my depression are totally different.’
In his new book, Breaking The Heart Open: The Shaping Of A Psychologist, Dr Bates argues mental health practice has ‘become terribly concerned with finding out what is wrong with people, rather than asking what happened to them – how have they coped. Tell me your story, your strengths. What are your resources?
How can we really strengthen your sense of self and address different unresolved issues in your life?’
Dr Bates, a regular contributor to RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor programme, is wary of overdiagnosis and overprescription of medication for mental health – though he accepts there is a place for it – and believes prolonged distress is ‘rarely an illness’.
He said: ‘We have the readings on depression, anxiety, OCD, whatever and we can sort you out pretty quickly with the drugs.
‘I think all these ways of framing things kind of justify my career as a therapist or psychiatrist, where I can frame your difficulties a certain way and therefore show you that I’m the person you need to sort this out – you have an illness, you need medication, lucky for you I have a prescription pad and I have the authority to give you that.
‘This is not to say that medicine can’t be helpful at times – of course it can. But what I’m really challenging is how we frame human distress in children and adults and how we equip people to come to terms with that. I think there are no quick fixes. And I think it’s rarely an illness.’
Based in Co. Sligo, the founder of youth mental health service Jigsaw, details his own ‘lifelong struggle’ with ‘a multitude of mental health issues’ in the book, which he says has helped him understand patients more than his training.
‘I got a good head start,’ he said. ‘I
probably took on my first client at age four – my mother.’
His younger brother died of measles at 16 months, and three-yearold Tony was sent to live with relatives for a time.
In the book he describes his nun aunt calmly listening to his deranged childhood babbling, which he credits with teaching him how to be with psychotic people.
‘By the time I actually reached formal training, my first job, I found I was in really familiar territory, particularly in a psychiatric hospital,’ he said. ‘I could see myself in the people who we were trying to help.’
His ‘fundamental message’ is that people ‘need to be understood’ and must connect with others to help themselves. ‘It can be moments of connection with anyone in our lives. The teacher to the lollipop man to an aunt who’s been through a difficult time herself and really seems to recognise a young girl’s struggles and let her know that she’s not weird – she is going through something very real and difficult, but that it’s important to trust that she can get through this.
‘Therapy can help to unsnag us from particular ways that we become stuck emotionally and so can be very useful. But therapy doesn’t make people better. Life is what makes people better. And connections with other people is what really gets people to get beyond their depression, anxiety, rage.’
‘Your depression and mine are totally different’