Shrinks are Shrinking! - There is a better way!

Do you ever wonder if insurance company executives and drug company executives get together late at night and dream up ways to milk us for every dime we're worth?

I don't wear a tinfoil hat and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm convinced that they're in cahoots.

Exhibit A...

A recent New York Times article tells the tale of Dr. Donald Levin, an old-school "talk therapy" psychiatrist who's nearing retirement.

There was a time when Dr. Levin's session with a patient ran 45 minutes. Under his guidance, patients would talk about their most personal issues, learn to cope, and rediscover self-worth.

But throughout the 1980s and 90s, insurance companies sharply reduced reimbursement for traditional talk therapy. This amounted to a drastic pay cut for most psychiatrists who didn't have patients wealthy enough to afford $200 or more per session.

So the profession realigned. Today, instead of spending 45 minutes with a patient, most psychiatrists--including Dr. Levin--spend just 15 minutes. The patient quickly details or updates his primary personal concerns and the doctor writes or adjusts prescriptions for one or more psychoactive drugs.

In short, the insurance industry has created a new profession: Drug pimp.

There was a time when psychiatrists avoided the use of drugs while a patient improved with talk therapy. It was a point of professional pride. For the majority of the profession, that time is long gone.

Now, instead of earning about $90 from an insurance company for a single 45-minute talk therapy session, psychiatrists collect about $150 from insurance companies for three sessions per hour, 15 minutes each, little talk and mostly drugs.

If you're ever referred to a psychiatrist and find yourself in the express lane to the drugstore, say no thanks and ask for a referral to a psychologist, a social worker or your clergy person if they are trained in this speciality. The expense will be lower, and it might even be covered by insurance.

Some mental health professionals use nutrition to solve emotional problems.  www.BestSelfUSA.com is well known for nutritional solutions to emotional problems.  Best Self USA also does phone counseling from coast tp coast. 

Recent research, resulting in the “orthomolecular” approach to stress and the symptoms relating to it, has made some tremendous strides in the approach to emotional problems.

A growing percentage of the population is now beginning to experience anxiety or depression symptoms that seem to be uncontrollable without the simple fix of drugs, prescribed by doctors or otherwise. Ground breaking work by Dr. Carl Pfeifer, Dr. George Samra, and others addressing the nutritional basis of such symptoms has given us some clinical guidelines that consistently produce results.

We found that a percentage of clients seemed to respond to traditional psychotherapies better than others. On introducing high quality nutrition to our counseling regimen we found a startling increase in effectiveness.

What Causes Negative Feelings?

The cause of negative emotions—depression, anxiety, anger, impatience, frustration, guilt, irritability—is a matter of opinion.

• To Freudian psychoanalysts, they are the result of repressed feelings that typically date back to childhood relationships with parents. This is sometimes called “standard insight therapy” or “the talking cure.”  Best Self USA therapists are eclectic in their approach to problems and use standard insight therapy with those persons who need to “talk it out.”

• To biological psychiatrists, negative feelings stem from chemical imbalances in the brain.  Best Self USA uses nutritional solutions for biologically based emotional problems

• To cognitive therapists, they represent distorted thinking. Cognitive therapy is comparatively new to the mental health profession, but its approach was first espoused more than 2,000 years ago by the Greek philosopher, Epictetus, who said, “People are not disturbed by events themselves, but rather by the views they take of them.” Shakespeare put it well in Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”  Best Self USA uses Cognitive/Behavioral therapy in most cases.

Some emotional turmoil is clearly the result of problems early in life, for example childhood abuse, and Freudian-style talk therapies can help. “But most people don’t have to spend a great deal of time understanding the past to improve how they react to potentially depressing situations in the present,” says psychologist Mark Sisti, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for Cognitive Therapy in New York City.

Cognitive therapy is sometimes called “short term, solution focused” therapy because it finds direct solutions to problems using more efficient and effective techniques than other forms of therapy. This results in fewer sessions, and less expense, in helping clients achieve their desired results by building health, rather than prescribing medications which will cause a whole new onslaught of debilitating side effects. Thus people can more quickly return to an enhanced level of enjoyment and productivity in their lives and relationships.

Before seeking psychiatric solutions for emotional problems, consider seeking the guidance of a nutritionally oriented Cognitive Behavioral Therapist. Find natural, health building solutions to enhance your overall well being!