Hmmm.....
Thinking about my previous comment, I wonder if this is a good problem for VR therapy. If a therapist could let a patient virtually jump and gain that realization that their problems are either solvable or meaningless, it just might turn their lives around instantly.....or it might just desensitize them from the fear of jumping.
Hmmmm.....

I absolutely love how he sums up becoming an adult as "whatever's nutty about me, was nutty about <whoever raised you>..."

That tickles me more than I can describe; living in an era where if you have problems with your childhood you go to a therapist about them.

I think the problem is, though they like to claim understanding, they really have no idea what the deal is with it or what causes it, and only fuzzy statistical data on how to treat it. I'd say what she says pretty much covers all it is they really know. I think this is why it's so hard to find a good therapist/psychologist. They can range from excellent to totally worthless (or worse), and diplomas and titles don't mean much. In my experience, the good ones are the ones that aren't married to a particular paradigm, and instead work almost entirely from their own personal experience of treating patients.

This tends to be the most frustrating thing of all, because it can take months and thousands of dollars to figure out if a given practitioner is any good. This is particularly difficult for people seeking treatment for the first time because their therapist tends to present themselves as having The Answer (as they naturally would), and if that doesn't work it's pretty discouraging for a person who doesn't need more discouragement. Um... where was I going? Right, well, I guess I'm saying the most important advice for new patients to understand your psychologist might suck or might just not be for you, and that's their problem not yours.

Two words: Wraparound Services

Look it up.

It can be used for more than just youth. I facilitated that model for 6 years to great success. Unfortunately, John Oliver is right when it comes to funding - you can't keep great therapists on board doing good work when your budget is constantly getting cut due to Medicare reimbursement rate cuts.

The private sector (i.e. private group and individual practices) really are the ones picking up the slack from community mental health agencies funding and therapist attrition issues.

If reimbursement rates to the private sector from private insurance starts going down even more than it already is then we're all screwed.

I have been this guy. Now I have a therapist who convinces me not to run along the tops of buildings and stuff. It's just not healthy. At least my therapist still allows me to wear the spandex.

It's still is a good idea to go to positive things when you're depressed. Lev's problem is he didn't get a therapist's advice on what kind of positive things to go to. I mean, Kraftwerk???

Oh god, all my therapists told me to write positive things, reality has now been revealed.

Oh man, I feel genuinely sorry for this guy, but when the sex therapist said she wanted to find him some relief, I honestly almost did a spit-take. Jesus Christ what a terrible wording.

The link selected was for its clarity of description, not for its modus operandi, but, if you like, here's additional support for the non-dichotomous (not "black and white") assertion I've made (despite your suggestions to the contrary).

Simply put, suicidality is a side-effect of anti-depressants due, in part, to the increased energy or motivation that could arise as a result of the commencement of a round of SSRIs. Someone suffering from a severe depressive episode may, within a few weeks of commencing an SSRI, avail themselves to the means for suicide (in the absence of therapeutic interventions) which, in the weeks previous, might have seemed too difficult or like too much work to pull off.

As a psychologist and clinician myself, I am trained to work closely with individuals struggling with depressive episodes with an eye on this very issue. Sadly, for whatever reason, Robin's therapist(s) were unable to intervene as quickly as was necessary, speculating as I have, that a recent round with anti-depressants was at play.

Though I don't think this is stupid, one does not get to simply make up new definitions of words.

That's what this lady is doing. She is wrong.

sym·pa·thy
[sim-puh-thee]
noun - harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.
or
the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, especially in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.

em·pa·thy
[em-puh-thee]
noun - the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

Sympathy does not imply disconnect as she is trying so desperately to redefine. Rather, just the opposite. Though empathy is a very important thing to convey to another, it is an effort to TRY to understand one's feeling. Sympathy is the ability to ACTUALLY feel the other.

In a career field of caring (e.g. mental health therapist), sympathy can be dangerous mainly because the over-identification of an emotion with someone can lead to enmeshment and lack of perspective along with a difficult time centering one's self and self-caring after the other has left.

I have no idea about this specific situation, but I do know that in some cases, therapists are available for people who work in jobs like these.

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

...in my experience, i have found that young practitioners in any modality, full of absolute conviction and surety, are the ones most likely to injure their clients.
I find that the deeper PT's, rolfers, and massage therapists study and work by musculature, which again is a reactive system in the body, the worse their results are. The focus on muscle strength, length and size has a psychological basis - we are in the mechanical age....thus we analogize to this...seeing the body as mechanical, robotic...a system of pulleys and hinges, insertions and attachments. Our emphasis is however misplaced. We are 70% water - and are more accurately a system of pressurized membranes and relationship, where fluidity is at a premium.

I won't argue that Chiro makes your joints feel better, Cracking my knuckles makes my knuckles feel better too... but it doesn't make them better. It doesn't "heal" anything, and that is alternative medicine's "Big Issue" with "Allopathic" medicine. You will ALWAYS, 100% guaranteed, get better care from a Physical Therapist, as they're there to ensure your body gets strong enough to heal itself. They can handle "acute adjustments" as well, but they prefer the holistic solution. The best part is, they have a proper understanding of the body, instead of all of the quackery mumbo-jumbo that Chiropractic Practitioners are taught (note: not all believe it, but they aren't taught anything else).

If you want to boil down how vaccines work into three words, sure, you might pick those three... but if you pick four, you'd get a very different phrase: "learn from dead things". But the main difference between vaccines and homeopathy is that we have an excellent understanding of what and why vaccines work, while homeopathy has never been validated by an impartial study. Sure, the premise started the same, but then doctors and scientists actually put work into verifying and validating how vaccines work. They made up new and interesting phrases to describe what was going on, just like homeopathy and it's "water memory", but unlike homeopaths, they reproduced their findings in labs across the country before they started selling it.

Homeopathy and Proper Medicine are as similar as me and the guy that wins a marathon. We both started the race... Sure, I was distracted after a block because I realized I could take a cab to the nearest restaurant and have a nice dinner and a beer, then I watched some TV, and took a cab back to the finish line and crossed it a couple hours later... But hey, we're both the same thing because we started at the same place, right?

The garbage man? I think you mean sanitation, specifically as it relates to bodily wasted, which has been around for over 5000 years. Of course, there have been many advances over the years, and it was not taken seriously in most of Europe until the industrial revolution. But it's certainly true... this technology that has been developing for 5000 years has had more of an effect on human health in cities than anything Medical Science has done.

Of course, it wasn't until we had a good understanding of biological vectors of diseases (research done by "Natural Philosophers", from which sprung all of modern science) that we understood just how important sanitation is, and started real improvements.


TLDR:

Chiropractic Care: May make you feel better, but at it's very best is the very least of what a PT can do.

Homeopathy: Complete and utter quackery, bearing only the most vague and abstract connection to real science.