Do you think most psychologists and therapists are batshit crazy?

[NewYearFitQueen]

I know about 4 in real life and trust me, they do not lead lives you would want to lead, plus at least two of the seem batshit crazy themselves

I don’t know any therapist, but know few spiritual yoga teachers who are fake as fuck. I feel sorry for people who follow them, pay for the silly retreats etc

Sample size of three: two are apparently completely lacking in self-awareness and are very difficult people. One of those shares too much about what her clients talk about and got too close to a male client. The third was a functioning alcoholic in her 20s following a tricky childhood but has done a lot of work on herself and I’d trust her.

A slightly passive aggressive reply, from someone from the caring profession. What a surprise.

Going back to the original point of crazy psychologists before you derailed it to issues within the SEND system (which obv are real but not relevant to this thread) what % of the people who see you think you do a good job?

You've given the impression you think you're wonderful and everyone else is the problem, do you have any evidence that anyone other than you agrees with this? What would your ex patients say about you? Have you heard of the phrase 'self praise is no praise'?

Was nursing over 40 years..in the 1970s, I worked in a psychiatric clinic in a big general hospital.. one psych had the most peculiar dress sense. I was in my 20s thought she was a lot older than me.. I was the chaperone, every consultation started with her asking if there were any sexual problems. Anyone here, old enough to have watched TV programme "Dear John". I also did agency nursing on Psych wards, I could usually spot a psych nurse a mile off. Not so much therapists. I have a relative who is one, and she is so kind and caring.. my oldest DS was sectioned about 16 years ago, the staff in the mental health unit didn't wear uniform, and frankly,it was difficult to tell who was a patient! The consultant was lovely, but some of the nursing staff were awful. I was told things, which were then denied, same with him.. he gave them my name as nok, then denied that. Was told to come in and speak to the consultant between certain hours,it was quite a journey and I was working ft nights myself. I would get there,to be told,he's got a day off,at a different hospital. In the end he rang me at home himself and we sorted it, and I know my way around the system.

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MNHQ

I think @therapist78 was just demonstrating being batshit 😂 it was a joke.

Do you know I was thinking when I read this, why is there the stereotype about psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists being crazy but people never apply it to mental health nurses, at least not ime?!

I did a counselling course starting at level 1 upto level 6. So met a lot of people over the 7 years doing the training too. I’d say 80% mad as a box of frogs. A lot weren’t suitable to progress ( it was decided by the course leaders) but even the ones who got all the way through (and the course leaders) were pretty mad. (I haven’t figured out if I was one of the 80% or not. )
Also as far as I am aware none of us ended up making a full time living from counselling.

Really worrying isn't it?

This woman, on residential actually said something awful to the tutor! It was while we were having a group discussion in the evening, relaxed, everybody having a drink and a cosy chat-lovely and he had a (very tactful and empathic) word with her about how she had actually continuously upset him and her fellow students and she might want to look at why she feels the need! I can't remember exactly what was said but all I could think was 'Bloody good on him!'.

I was an RMN for many years, there was always the joke that the only difference between a mental health nurse and patient was one was paid to be there.

😂😂 that made me laugh.

I’ve been visiting psychiatric hospital recently and I’ll admit the staff were erm interesting (but patients so often work ie the reception or cafe it gets a little confusing!) but have found community to be very level headed.

Look, you have an axe to grind and no doubt you had bad experiences. They were nothing to do with me - ed psychs are not CAMHS - and I do not deserve your hostile projection.

I am a psychologist. A whole field of psychology works within SEND so yes it's relevant to the thread, which denounced "psychologists" as batshit.

As it happens, where I work every family and every school is given the opportunity to rate their experience of their EP - schools at the end of the year and families when cases are closed. This is anonymous feedback from families and goes into a central feedback point so parents are not fearful that negative comments are directly attributed to them. So yes I do know that my work is valued. And we don't refer to children and families as "patients" in educational psychology.

I won't be engaging with you further.

I did foundation training and would say over half were unsuitable to be therapists. I’ve also had a lot of counselling myself and haven’t found it very helpful. Just talking endlessly in circles without any real progress.

There are countless peer-reviewed studies showing that psychotherapy can improve a variety of different mental health problems. But of course it won’t work for everyone. A good alliance between therapist and patient is the key to recovery (as shown by research).

I’m a therapist and I do agree that lots of my colleagues have issues, but no more than in any other field. Lots of people train to be therapists who need to work more on themselves. But I met way more nutters working in the media.

I would trust a clinical psychologist over other types of therapists any day. They're not all good, but as posters have said it's very hard to become a psychologist and they tend to be good overall. There are of course many good therapists of other types but yes, a hell of a lot of people who should not be working in mental health. Therapists need to be having their own therapy too.

Well based on anecdata I would say that there are a lot of people who have deep problems themselves who are drawn to therapeutic professions.

That isn’t necessarily a problem if they are self aware and have done a lot of therapeutic work on themselves, but sadly I do think a lot of people who embark on a career without having made significant progress on their own journeys. I think this is often due to financial pressures, not least the significant costs associated with being in therapy long term.

This plus the very real problem of vicarious traumatisation does sometimes lead to unfortunate situations where they just can’t take much more themselves.

Recently I had a few sessions with a therapist and in one session she said to me “most therapists aren’t very good because they are in it to help themselves not other people”. It seemed a little bit like a confession on her part so I made that our last session, especially as she’s said some other things in previous sessions that were at best amber flags.

Over the years in the past I’ve also had sessions that definitely raised an eyebrow. For example the guy who started to tell me about his experiments with psychedelic drugs.

Or a lady who told that as she’d be travelling for our next scheduled session she’d like to conduct it over the phone, but don’t worry she wouldn’t be driving whilst on the phone her husband would be.

Or the trauma aware therapist who was late for our online session and when I called her after the allotted time said she was in the bus and would call me back soon. She got off the bus and called me back whilst stood in the street and started shouting that she was a trustworthy person. She later said she’d been triggered herself and had reverted to childhood and I suggested that maybe she wasn’t quite ready to be taking other people’s traumas on board so regularly.

I’ve also had a few therapists, particularly people who had qualified relatively recently (say under five-ten years) who sometimes forgot they were the therapist not the client in sessions and did things like over share or seek advice on their own issues, or even complain about other clients behaviour.

I will point out that all these people were properly qualified, BACP registered and so on.

On the other hand I have also met some very grounded, stable, understanding therapists who have helped me with transformative change.

It really is a bit hit and miss what you get and it takes a lot of sifting through. Which is probably often the last thing someone who is at the point of seeking therapy needs.

It often attracts people who have suffered and want to give back which is lovely but unfortunately they are not always in the right place mentally to support others.

another important consideration, alongside finding a therapist you connect with, is readiness to engage with therapy. There’s a lot of research which shows that if you go to therapy ready to engage fully and do the work, it will be successful. If you arrive with the expectation that’s it’s a passive process where you turn up each week and through some sort of therapeutic osmosis, change somehow occurs as a natural side effect, it might not be successful.

Thanks @mirsd - that makes sense in my head, but in practice not so much. I was never clear what “the work” was that I was supposed to be doing. I talked about my abusive and impoverished childhood, my alcoholic father who topped himself. I got a few head tilts and a few “maybe it’s because x”. Nothing I hadn’t already considered tbh, or that anyone with a few brain cells might have pondered over. But dredging it all up every week made me feel worse, which I duly recounted, to be told it’s “normal”. Okay, so then what? I never found out the answer to that question because I binned it off - told the psychologist I thought I was impervious to therapy - which obviously proved to her that I was avoidant! 🙄

The problem with peer reviewed evidence in psychology is that much of the “progress” is self-reported. I suspect there are some MH conditions that require nothing more than an hour of navel-gazing self indulgence every week. I found it tedious and was thinking of all the useful stuff I could be doing that didn’t involve talking to resting-bitchface!

One small exception I will make is for DS’ school’s educational psychologist who specializes in ND kids and has shown incredible skills in reaching him and his peers. I suspect this sort of proves the resourcing point above though - it’s an independent specialist school run by a Trust, with its own psychology team for 100 pupils, so there is minimal NHS or LA manipulation involved.

i worked alongside a child psychologist (CAMHS) and he was the least empathetic person I have ever met and hopeless at talking with children on their level. The last I’d heard he’d been promoted , which I find very concerning.

I am a qualified counsellor who trains other potential counsellors.

I have not found therapy helpful for myself either, somewhat ironically. I have been unlucky with the therapists I have had, I think because I obviously see the value in the profession. I had it a few times privately and twice through the NHS-both of the NHS ones were absolutely useless.

Yes, the therapist I knew personally was absolutely car crash and had been since her teens, she lurched from one crisis to the next. I was gobsmacked that she was allowed to advise vulnerable people given all of her own ongoing mental health and addiction issues.

There's also a chicken and egg sotuation where the young person is so unwell/depressed that they are unable to engage with therapy before they are medicated but have to have therapy before CAMHS will contemplate medication.

Also, theraposts are a bit like new shoes, where you have to try a few before one fits. But with insititutions loke CAMHS if the child doean't engage first time, it's on the child - or adolescent.

Our dd got betternwith a combination of BUPA and self funding. It cost £8k and fell i to place once sje was diagnosed with ADHD. She's now teaching (SEN) and very happy. That would not have been the case had we been dependent on the NHS. Chicken and egg again. Had we been dependent on the NHS she'd have likely dropped out of school with her self esteem in the cellar rather than on the floor and dependent on society rather than giving something back.

Whilst I accept that CAMHS and MH needs more resources, the attitudes in the service are so toxic and dysfunctional that resources alone can't put it righr.

What was it Basil Fawlty said about psychiatrists? "If he wants to be a psychiatrist that's his own funeral. They're all as mad as bloody March hares but that's not the point. He gets paid for sticking his nose into people's private... um... details." Echoing what people something think of psychiatrists.

More seriously, though, in John Cleese's book Families and how to Survive Them, he discusses family therapy with psychiatrist Robin Skynner, who says that most psychiatrists are mid-range when it comes to mental health, not supremely healthy as is often believed. According to him, people with excellent mental health would not generally be interested in the profession, and would actually have a lot of difficulty helping someone to overcome problems. Therapists generally have to undergo therapy during the training, and while they practise. Similarly, a maths genius might not be very good at teaching maths, because they might not be able to connect with someone much less good at it than themselves.

That is not fully qualified! You need to have the doctorate, which is very hard to get onto. The NHS pays the fees and you get a salary while training.