Mental Health

Is Modern Mental Health Missing Something

Depression and anxiety are epidemic. Is it because we’re better at detecting and labeling, or has the world become that much more stressful?

Consider the last time you’ve heard a breakthrough in therapeutic technique. Outside of perhaps EMDR, do you know any modalities that didn’t come out of the upsurge of therapeutic ways of engaging people that didn’t come out of the 60s? Could a new therapy even sprout up through the highly regimented medical and insurance systems that limit all interactions to the modalities ‘deemed’ the most efficacious, using words like evidence based? The fact that society still has an epidemic of depression and anxiety, isn’t that evidence what we’re doing as a society isn’t working?

Someone might say we’re just better at detecting it. So, can I also say if we’re better at detecting it we are also “more sensitive.” In being more sensitive, are we not all walking on eggshells?

The analogy I have used sometimes is playing the guitar. There are no snowflakes playing guitar. You need some calluses for sure. Not so much that you don't notice your hand is on fire when you touch the stove. If you don’t have any experience of pain, calluses on your fret hand or…