Health and Psychology

The American Psychological Association is doing promotional spots promoting therapy over medication.  I'm often asked why is therapy so expensive?  The short answer is "It isn't." Medication requires a visit to a physician's office.  It requires renewals of refills.  At the end of the treatment the person taking medication has the same set of skills they had prior to taking the medication.  If symptoms return, they will need medication again.

Therapy works to provide short term effective treatment for things like anxiety, depression, weight loss, stopping smoking, trauma, and treating other types of conditions.   There are specific techniques that will reduce symptoms and provide the person with techniques to deal with any future difficulties. So the person stops treatment with the skills they need and they may never have to return.

Medications have not been shown to be effective for low levels of depression.  Medications are found effective for severe depression, not mild or moderate levels of depression.  Even for severe depression, medication and therapy are often more effective than medication alone.  For anxiety, medications work best for short term situational anxiety and are designed to be used sparingly because many of the medications used to treat anxiety are addictive.  In contrast, therapy is quite effective for situational and other types of anxiety.  It doesn't require prescription renewals.  There is no risk of addiction.  There are types of therapy called "cognitive or behavioral" forms of treatment, that are very short term and produce lasting relief of symptoms and specific tools to help the person manage the symptoms on their own.

Psychological testing can help clarify diagnosis, resulting in quicker, more effective and more appropriate forms of treatment.  For couples, there are measures that will help clarify values and major sticking points to assit therapists in focusing treatment.  Psychological testing can also clarify psychological, academic and neurological issues for children struggling with school.  It can help ensure that the attention difficult is really due to an attention deficit disorder, and not to a psychological problem, learning disorder, or a neurological disorder apart from an attention difficulty. 

Following an intake we can often estimate how many sessions will be required to reduce symptoms significantly or eliminate them completely.  We can provide objective, symptom reduction based information, so the person in treatment can objectively know what they are working on and how much they are improving.

For more information feel free to contact our office.