Bruce E. Levine, author of Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy, just posted this new article to The Huffington Post.

From the article:

Both research and experience have long informed mental health professionals of a strong link between depression and relationship dissatisfaction. So why is psychiatry losing that awareness? One major reason is the disappearance in psychiatry of psychotherapy (talk therapy), in which it becomes obvious just how important our significant relationships are to our mental health.
According to the August 2008 Archives of General Psychiatry article “National Trends in Psychotherapy by Office-Based Psychiatrists,” the percentage of patient visits to a psychiatrist involving any psychotherapy fell to 28.9% in 2004-2005 (from 44.4% in 1996-1997), and the percentage of psychiatrists using psychotherapy with all their patients dropped to only 11 percent in 2004-2005.

Psychiatry has increasingly replaced psychotherapy with something called “medication management,” which largely consists of symptom assessment and prescription updates. Medication management typically takes ten or fifteen minutes and is scheduled every two to three months.

When doctors only offer medical management sessions every couple of months, they can neglect to ask about a patient’s marriage; and even if they do ask about it, they are likely to accept at face value a stoic patient’s reply that “my marriage is fine.” A competent psychotherapist knows that patients, initially, often avoid acknowledging an abusive or neglectful relationship, the pain of which may be too overwhelming; and that it can take a great deal of time and repeated gentle questioning to discover important truths.

In quality psychotherapy, a mental health professional takes the time necessary to create trust, which is required to effectively explore a patient’s relationship life. Miserable significant relationships or the absence of any significant relationships are common sources of depression. And major antidotes to depression are genuine friendships, satisfying intimacy, and supportive community.

Read the full article here.

Share

 Printer-Friendly

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 4:46 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.