What is the ultimate goal of therapy?
By: Robert Avsec, FSPA Operations Chief
The following comes from
over on LinkedIn where Megan Cornish, LICSW, is a mental health thought leader that I follow. I’m interested in what FSPA members think. So here’s Megan’s post:
Nobody has a universal definition of what the ultimate goal of therapy is. So if I hear someone say they’re going to improve mental health outcomes, I wait for them to clarify which stakeholder’s definition they’re using.
And if they don’t clarify, or can’t, I assume they haven’t been to the basement yet.
I didn’t realize this was the biggest, wickedest problem in mental health until I worked with Russell DuBois, Ph.D. a few years ago and he basically red-pilled me on the whole thing.
Patients, therapists, insurers, and society are each hoping for different outcomes, and because differing goals tend to pull in different directions, our efforts to “improve mental health” will always have one foot on the gas and one on the brake.
I just want that to sink in: our primary measure of psychological wellness is a worksheet that was designed to sell antidepressants.
(Also, even if we were to agree on a definition of success, how would we measure it? No one knows- but I guarantee it wouldn’t be via the PHQ-9.)
I dove deep into the details in my latest Substack article.
P.S. An ask:
I recently learned that if I had spent the last few years building an audience on Substack instead of LinkedIn, I could probably be doing this full time- learning, writing, and teaching, and supporting my family that way. I gave a lot of thinking and labor away for free here. Some regrets there.
If you follow me on LinkedIn and haven’t followed me on Substack yet, I’d really love it if you would. And if you think this piece would resonate with someone you know, sharing it means more than you probably realize.
You don’t owe me anything, but I’m also not too proud to ask!
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