I am always intrigued about the perceptions of people who engage with therapy for the first time. They may be doing so because their doctor has recommended a period of counselling, or increasingly, there is an acceptance of therapy and a realisation that therapy can and does help and many people are now referring themselves. I believe a recent survey undertaken by the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP) suggested that 95% of people would seek help for an emotional problem before it got out of hand. However, that does not allay the uncertainty of entering therapy for the first time, or engaging at any level with a therapist; there seems to be a fear and uncertainty around what we do.
To give you an example, I was talking with someone recently in an unrelated-to-my-therapy-room environment, about an issue that the person was having with a relationship. I don’t think they knew what I did for a living; had they done so, perhaps they would have looked a little less surprised when I asked if they had considered getting some counselling? “Do you think I might be mad?” was the almost immediate reply. I did my best at reassurance, but if I’m honest, well, perhaps this particular example wasn’t the best one to pick! There is the old adage that madness is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.
To the layman, the use of the words ‘madness’ and mental health would seem to go hand in hand. Madness is historically the umbrella term for conditions that we now know of by different names, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, personality disorder, neurosis, psychosis, the list goes on and on. We have childhood fantasies of ‘mad people’ barking at the full moon, or some poor vagrant, wandering through a crowded street, arguing with himself at a volume that everyone can hear. Of course, if we expand the term of ‘mental health’, we can also include a lot of the milder conditions that include depression, anxiety, and stress, any dis-ease that we associate more with our thoughts and emotions, than with a physical ailment.
As research into mental health disorders continues to evolve, I am sure that in the future, there will be many more of these terms, labels which I have mixed feelings about. I don’t like the idea of giving someone a label that says in some way that ‘he’ is this, and so will behave in that way if placed in a given situation. We are all unique; how can anyone predict what I will do next, just because I have a label that describes me? And yet, I also have to concede that my experience of having been given a label at one time, helped me understand something about myself that I had been unaware, and gave me a new found freedom of expression that I had previously lacked. Despite this realisation, if you ask me for a label, I’m afraid I am going to steer clear of any diagnosis, I’ll leave that to others. If you ask me if talking will help, the answer is almost certainly “yes”.
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