Therapy works. Seriously.
Information can useful for clients and therapists to support therapy’s ability to have profound and lasting positive impact; Mick Cooper (see below) discovered through his research that actually it matters less about the “modality” (ie CBT, Psychodynamic, humanistic, transactional analysis etc etc) and rests more on the therapeutic relationship – ie how the client feels about the therapist, and vice versa. My hypnotherapy tutor and colleague Adam Eason cites evidence-based therapies asserting that hypnotherapy has been shown to be more effective than simple talking therapies but STILL it appears that the therapeutic encounter is the most effective way towards a positive transformation.
Mick Cooper carried out statistical research into the benefits of talking therapies. You can check out his “The Facts are Friendly” videos here:
With apologies for the three part series. These are dated from 2008 and Mick also produced a book to support these videos and findings, which you can find here.
Statistics from the Mental Health organisation suggest that 74{0420f535ce615780036d97fb0e48496e457086dc60a6d0fc56706f61c82d85a3} of adults during 2018 experienced some form of stress, breakdown or overwhelm which meant they found it impossible to attend to daily life / work tasks.
These figures imply mental health professionals are not only desirable but essential in our world of increasing exposure to potentially unreliable and disturbing media together with excessive workloads, relationship problems and more. We are designed as part of the human condition to experience anxiety as a coping mechanism, to avoid stressful situations yet at times the one compounds the other and increasing workloads together with less recognition can play a part.
As a therapist I also experience workplace stress; our profession is not respected as it could be, many of us may work for free or at a lower rate, or work in agencies in placements whilst completing training course in addition to working with Employment Assistance Programmes whose rates are set at a particular level.
Many of us share a deep calling to help the world and yet we cannot if we are not fully supported and I hear stories regularly about really great therapists giving up either because they are not well known, well supported, or have simply burned out. This is not good news for people who need help if the bank of supply is not there.
On top of that many turn to training in counselling because we have a calling yet although it has a relatively high attendance rate, there is also a high drop out rate because all the figures do not stand up to scrutiny, the training is emotionally HARD and demanding both academically and mentally.
As a provider of therapy myself, I recognise its vital provision in life and trained because I got so much value out of it.
Therapy works. It needs to be accessible to all. How can we make it possible?
