I think it's pretty easy to make the transition from I went to therapy and it sucked and my siblings and friends went to therapy and it sucked for them so therapy sucks in general. That doesn't make it correct, just an easy conclusion at which to arrive. How many people tell of going to therapy and bad mouthing it vs. going and praising it? I think the tendency in our culture is to bad mouth something that doesn't work much more than a tendency to praise what works.
I'm pretty down on the talking cure because of personnal experience with more than one therapist. I have no problem with mental health as a profession but since every therapist I've seen since I was a child wasn't going to get paid if they told my parents "your son is fine, take him home" it's difficult not to imagine money as a motivating factor in some of their decisions.
Medication for depression is not exclusively what I'm talking. Does anyone here think that too many children are being medicated for mental health disturbances than is warranted? Why is that? How is a 12 year old supposed to respond to a therapist who states then even though their scores on profiling tests show a lower than average tendency for anti-social behaviour that those aren't showing the complete picture and it is "obvious" that they need more therapy?
We live in a sick society in my opionion and sick societies in all probability breed sick persons. I tried explaining the difference between anti-establishment ideas and anti-social ideas to a therapist but couldn't really get any conversation going. They can treat you (and charge for it) for anti-social tendencies but not for anti-establishment ideas.
I tend to think that since we know as little about the mind and brain and how they relate to behaviour that with this level in inexactitude many errors are bound to be made. That is not a vote against mental health as a profession just a note that a higher level of caution may be warranted than with the applications of other forms of medicine. My internal medicine physician is working with a greater level of knowledge than a psychotherapist. Potentially anyway.
John Thornton