How To Choose A Mental Health Care Provider

[matt_arnold]

Several years ago, The Road Less Traveled suggested to me the idea that everyone could benefit from therapy, regardless of whether a crisis situation has developed to force them to consider themselves "sick." From observing the human race, I agree with the author that mental health is always a matter of degree. I'm dubious of the claim that a

Comments

Re: You've a right to your opinion

[matt_arnold]

Let me further clarify that I don't want to take the lackadaisical attitude that you suggest, when it comes to the topic of the potential victimization of desperate people who are losing a lot of money. Especially if they are not complementing their treatment with conventional medicine. Anyone can think whatever they want without comment from me; until and unless it crosses the line of harm.

Open-mindedness means allowing one's claims to be robustly challenged by the best competing claims. The appearance of closed-mindedness can occur when someone has already done that and the standard claim has had a long undefeated winning streak. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome was once on a bumper-sticker as the definition of insanity. That's not what open-mindedness is.

if someone came along and said, "well look, here's a treatment that you perhaps haven't looked at before," I would look at it. I've learned what questions to ask. For instance, is it only efficacious under highly suspicious circumstances, such as not working unless the patient believes in it? Is it a panacea? Are the ingredients secret? Is its credibility based only on undocumented anecdotes? Are failures explained away with ad-hoc hypotheses? Do the practitioners progress in their understanding, or do they continue to mechanically go through the motions for centuries? Do they think that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event? Would the malady have gone away by itself?