Do not fall for that crap about being in therapy means you are screwed up in the head. It is not necessarily true anyway.
At any rate, a high percentage of the population meets criteria for a DSM diagnosis at any given time. Surveys in the rest of the world, including the 3rd World, show high rates of DSM diagnoses. One survey in Afghanistan had to be curtailed early because 100% of subjects were meeting criteria for DSM Major Depression.
Living under a dictatorship may cause mass mental problems. Some claim that almost everyone in North Korea meets criteria for a DSM anxiety disorder. A survey in Iraq prior to The War on the Iraqi People showed that 40% of young men, married or not, met criteria for DSM Impotence. That is, they had regular impotence problems.
Really most everyone needs psychotherapy. In places like Argentina and France, just about everyone who can afford it goes into therapy. In the US and possibly the rest of the West, high percentages of the population are on antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications. Most of them probably meet criteria for a DSM diagnosis in order to be prescribed such meds.
Another thing to consider is that for people who are deeply ill, psychotherapy doesn’t work very well. Psychotherapy works best for minor mental illnesses or what some call neuroses. However, one theory is that everyone is “neurotic” to one degree or another. I asked a clinical psychologist once if anyone was healthy. He said he didn’t think so. Over the course of his career, he had run into maybe 20,000 people to the point where he could figure them out pretty well, and he said he hadn’t met a healthy person yet.
All therapists have to go through long-term therapy as part of becoming a therapist.
Therapy is a luxury good. It is like nice cars, nice homes and fancy food. It is quite costly. Most people in the world need it, trust me! But in the rest of the world it is too much of a luxury so they don’t get it. Everyone in Hollywood is in therapy. All rich people are in therapy.
Most people, if they can afford it, get in therapy. Ultimately it is a luxury good whereby you try to work through your issues, resolve your deep-seated problems, hangups, anxieties, issues and problems and ultimately grow as a human being.I once asked a psychologist why so many therapists seem to have their stuff together so well. He answered that most of them had been working on themselves in a therapeutic sense for a long time, years to decades.
Only Westerners and wealthier people can afford such indulgences. Consider yourself lucky that you are rich enough to afford such a luxury good!
