What Do We Do About Really Serious Mental Illness?

Tom, Martin, and Deidre respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Our question this week:My gut feeling tells me there is something very wrong with psychotherapy.On the other hand, when I hear about all the complex and even serious psychological problems some people have, it seems to make sense that only a trained professional can truly supply the necessary help.

Tom:

Martin and Deidre this seems to be one of the big myths that has been promoted, propagated, however you want to say it.

Martin:

Yes, it’s the myth of “you need a professional” and it’s the usual answer to someone who says they have a problem—they say “you need a professional.”However, here again we have usual dichotomy between research results and what the practitioners do.In various research settings where they use amateurs versus professionals the results are kind of mixed and in certain cases the professionals do better, and in other cases the amateurs do better, and in certain cases it’s a tie. But there hasn’t been any demonstration at any time that anybody needs to be a professional in order to get results in dealing with human problems and this has been looked at in a variety of ways, whether it’s amateurs versus professionals or they sometimes use graduate students who aren’t in psychology, there’s just a lot of different ways.The challenge that I’ve given is that if you take two groups of “therapists,” I say in quotes because one group can be true therapist and the other group can be anybodies, just take some people who normally deal with people and call them therapists too, send them both patients and then wait for the results to happen.I can just tell you the results are going to be equivalent.Again, it’s the real fact that people change because they want to and what you need to do, when they can’t do it themselves, is to bring somebody alongside in order to help them do it.And so the idea that professionals are needed is not true.

Tom:

Now what I think people forget sometimes about psychotherapy is that the heart of it is whether it be a psychiatrist in most cases, or a psychologist or as you said just and aunt or an uncle with some wisdom, the heart here is talk, it’s rhetoric, right?

Deidre:

That’s right, it’s just talk and one person who has really spoken out against psychotherapy and its underlying psychologies and says psychotherapy is a myth said (this is Thomas Szasz) he said “It’s just talk.If someone wants to pay to talk to me, that’s fine, but it’s just talk.”And basically what a therapist is, is a paid friend, stays around as long as there is money.Actually what they have—they have their credentials, they have their licenses on the wall, they have their degrees, they have an office, they have all of this professional status in order to engender hope.For the believer, where does our hope lie?You see all of this is a false hope.But our hope in Christ is a true hope.It is a hope that gives us promises that will be fulfilled for eternity.Even the whole professional stance—you need a professional—displaces the person’s real source of hope.

Tom:

Martin, did you want to add anything to that.

Martin:

Well I was going to say related to this whole amateur/professional; this is one of the real really big problems within the evangelical church.This whole professionalization of this relationship where somebody needs help and you’ve got to have an expert, so-called expert to do it.We are the experts, they aren’t the experts, we have the truth, and they don’t have the truth.We have the power that we’ve been empowered with through the Word and through the Holy Spirit.We don’t need their theories, ideas, guesses, and opinions.WE have the facts and they just have whatever rhetoric they’ve come up with.

Deidre:

And the we he is talking about includes all Christians who have been walking with the Lord, learning the Word and seeing how the Lord works in their lives.

Tom:

And that’s our great encouragement for not only this program, but also why I am excited to have you guys on board here with us.We just want people to get back to God’s Word, to walk in the truth of God’s Word, to be a servant as you mentioned before, Galatians:6:1Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
See All..., 2, we are to bear one another’s burdens.I mean we have that mandate, that exhortation from God’s Word and it wouldn’t be there if we were not able to fulfill it.So we want to encourage people to search the scriptures daily, get into God’s Word and you can be fruitful and productive in all matters of living, of trying to be fruitful and productive to the glory of God