Reply to comment

I appreciate the angle you've brought to the discussion here, Sophie--and I wonder what this looks like from a practical standpoint.  How can a mental health worker enter into a conversation with a "patient" not expressly seeking help--will that patient ever engage in the services for a mental health care work?  Or, when the patient is expressly seeking help, how can the physician or worker help them evolve from their position as pure patient to one as helper/worker/enabler?  How does this shift fit with the final question--why we can we not trust someone on the outside as having a clearer vision than the person on the inside--as we trust physicians in their diagnosis of medical issues, even when we don't detect them ourselves--which does suggest that the phsycian has a perspective that will help the patient to find more help and clarity than without?  Perhaps this also goes to Yona's earlier assertion that everyone could, in fact, (however practical or not) benefit from mental healthcare.   

Does it all then go back to the necessity of a cultural change, which changes how we view mental healthcare, so that it can become a dynamic continuum, part of an ongoing conversation, which incorporates "reciprocity" and which doesn't necessarily have a defined beginning and end, but one where better stories are constructed toward more productive and satisfying ends?   How do se keep such a relationship moving towards productive ends, not introducing a system where mutual benefit creates an unhealthy reliance on the other?  Or will a relationship which functions around these ideals always leave the door open for this mutual reciprocity?  Our close relationships in our everyday lives do not have a finite end point in mind; would it follow, then, that a patient and mental health worker's relationship should also not have a defined end (and as such, is that practical)?  Or would we be imposing on the patient/mental health care worker relationship expectations better left to natural relationships elsewhere in life?

 I didn't mean to raise so many new questions--questions that may not have been at all implied in your comments--but I appreciate all that you've set me off to thinking about!