Anyone who believes “advice” is going to help with depression, does not understand the condition even slightly, and should not be engaged in practice with clients.
Anyone who implies you should be seeing a “talk” therapist for severe depression, also does not know what they are talking about.
A few hard truths for you to consider:
- Lots of therapists are not very good — thats a fact.
- It’s also a fact that laymen are not really qualified to assess therapist competency
- While it might seem easy (am I getting better or not) there are several complex reasons why laymen should generally not attempt it … they are listed below:
Reasons why it’s risky for clients to judge their mental health providers:
- change is slow and interventions (for depression) are nuanced and involve multiple interlocking stages; it takes time
- if they knew as much as their therapist, they could assess her performance … but they don’t
- clients are MUCH MORE prone to labeling super skilled therapists as ineffective than they are the mediocre ones who don’t threaten much big change; the unconscious mind of the client is TERRIFIED of destabilizing change … aka homeostasis preservation … and this causes the logical brain to RATIONALIZE (imagined / constructed) reasons to end treatment BEFORE big changes can manifest … in other words, ALL clients are prone to unconscious self sabotage