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Hello All,

I have not had a very healthy weekend andmaybe forced to miss tonight’s discussion but I wanted to let you all know howI felt about last week.

I will be the first to admit that Ibelieve talk therapy in conjunction with other forms of therapy and even solois extremely beneficial. However, I do wholeheartedly agree with Martin thatpeople in today’s society have begun to depend upon talk therapy so completelythat often times they are no longer capable of thinking about issues andproblems by themselves and coming to productive and coherent solutions. I alsobelieve that in the past the ability for members of a family to talk aboutissues, problems and concerns created a strong foundation for familial supportand development.

In regards to Yona’s comment that alarger portion of the human population have ‘underlying problems that can behelped through therapy’, I do not disagree, people are bound to have problems,and a lot of those problems can be helped using talk therapy but those problemscan also be helped through individual contemplation and analysis. Human beingsare engineered survivors, and if all therapists were to disappear – at least inthe past – it wouldn’t be the end of the human race, as we know it. I also amuneasy about the comparison between a yearly physical and mental health care.If I were to tell a physician that my entire body hurt, that I had horriblecoughing fits, that I was out of breath after walking up a stair case, but thatI also smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish and ate only trans-fats, hewould wonder why I hadn’t put two and two together. I feel like it is the samewith a surplus of talk therapy, people complain about unhealthy relationships,estranged familial relationships, and everything else under the sun. If thosepeople sat down and thought about their relationships and why they had reachedthe states they had, I am pretty sure they would be able to reach somesemi-decent conclusions and then proceed to take reasonably well-plannedactions. I do fear that in constantly asking for mediation in our lives the daywill come when we no longer know what is good for us, what we can handle, whatwe can’t and what we simply don’t want to.

I do feel as though at least in thiscountry, medication is over-prescribed and certain problems can be handledwithout popping several pills. However, I also know first hand that sometimesmedication is absolutely the fastest and most effective way to bring a personback from a place they really do not want to be. I believe that the phrase ‘everythingin moderation’ really applies here.

I will certainly write more later, butunfortunately I feel physically exhausted from just sitting up at the computer.Hope you all have a great class!