Mental illness has emerged into a topic for public discussion after long being unmentionable in polite company. It's no longer required that one pretend emotional problems happen only to other people.
But the fact that mental illness has come out of the closet doesn't mean that its problems have been eliminated by the bright lights of public exposure. Treatment of the emotionally disturbed continues to be perhaps the most mismanaged and least understood of all the problems confronting the average American family.
Robert A. Baker, a retired psychologist, contends that "in its dealings with the human mind and human behavior, medical care has little or nothing of which to be proud. Rather, the history of mental medicine, with the exception of neurology . . . has been a disgrace and a continuing story of un- and anti-scientific fumbling and bumbling. . . "
Baker's book, Mind Games (Prometheus Books), contends that much of what passes for psychotherapy "is the worst thing that could be done." Baker objects to the message that all of us are sick, dysfunctional, neurotic, addicted, maladjusted, depressed, compulsive, codependent, disconnected, spiritually lost, disaffected, anxious, phobic, or any other complaint you can imagine.
Baker believes that therapy "unfortunately does very little and there are relatively few problems it has even been able to solve." Baker's book employs ridicule to a fine degree in ripping apart today's reliance on what he considers ill advised methods of dealing with emotional problems.
"We have learned little from our misguided efforts in the name of healing and despite our vaunted scientific progress what few scientific contributions have been made to mental health have all been in neurology, that is, in physical health not mental," he writes. "The assumption that all mental health is all physical health is a catastrophic mistake and a glaring failure to understand the basic nature of the human being."
Baker doesn't deny that there are competent practitioners at work who "in a pinch, can provide some useful advice." But he believes that before seeking professional help, one should "make a sincere effort to resolve your own troubles and solve your problems without the help of a shrink. You might as well face it: you alone are responsible for your physical and mental health and well-being."
Baker's principal message of pulling one's self up by one's own bootstraps will cause dismay among those who have made the profession of psychotherapy such a money tree.
As Baker writes, "It should now be crystal clear that there's no salvation in the psychiatrist's pill and the devout should remember religion's painful message: God helps those who help themselves."
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