Taking Psychology with You

Becoming a Smart Consumer of Psychological Treatments

If you have a persistent problem that you do not know how to solve, one that causes you considerable unhappiness and that has lasted 6 months or more, it may be time to look for help. To take the lessons of this chapter with you, you might want to consider these suggestions:

Take all ads and Internet promotions for prescription drugs with a large grain of salt: Be skeptical! Currently, the United States and New Zealand are the only countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. (Pay close attention to the commercials during the next hour of television you watch, and count how many ads you see for some kind of drug.) Remember that ads are not about educating you; they are about selling you a product. “New” is not necessarily better; many “me too” drugs simply tinker with a blockbuster drug’s formula in the smallest way, and are then legally (if not medically) entitled to claim it is “new and improved.” Consult a pharmacist or the FDA’s website, and check out any drug you are about to take; go to reliable sources that are not funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The Public Citizen’s Health Research Group continues to revise its excellent consumer guide, Worst Pills, Best Pills.
Make an informed decision when you choose a therapist. Make sure you are dealing with a reputable individual with appropriate credentials and training. Your school counseling center is a good place to start. You might also seek out a university psychology clinic, where you may be able to get therapy with a graduate student in training; these students are closely supervised, and the fees will be lower.
Choose a therapy or treatment most likely to help you. If possible, begin by talking to a competent psychotherapist or counselor about your problems and what intervention might help you. But don’t forget that not all therapies are equally effective for all problems. You should not spend 4 years in psychodynamic therapy for panic attacks, which can generally be helped in a few sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Likewise, if you have a specific emotional problem—such as depression, anger, or anxiety—or if you are coping with chronic health problems, look for a cognitive or behavior therapist. However, if you just want to discuss your life with a wise and empathic counselor, the kind of therapy may not matter so much.
Consider, but be wary of, online therapy delivered by video, smartphone, or email. Many people are unwilling to seek help in a one-on-one therapy session or are unable to do so because of where they live or other obstacles. Clinical scientists have been studying and promoting the use of technologies to reach such individuals (Kazdin, 2015). Randomized controlled studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of some Internet programs, such as one designed to help people quit smoking (Muñoz et al., 2006) and others that deliver monitored, validated CBT instructions. Telephone therapy—sometimes called “telemental psychotherapy”—can also be helpful, as evidenced by the success of “quitlines” to help people stop smoking (Lichtenstein, Zhu, & Tedeschi, 2010; Toll et al., 2015). Many people are actually more likely to stay with a program of therapy-by-telephone than with face-to-face therapies. One company, Lantern, hopes that their subscription smartphone app linking clients and therapists will fill the gap between questionable self-help books and pricey extended therapy sessions (Carrns, 2014). However, if you start any kind of therapy with a professional therapist via email, smartphone, or video, be sure the therapist is using an “HIPAA-compliant” method, that is, following government guidelines to protect your privacy. Although therapy by email may seem to be easiest, it has serious limitations as a form of therapy because the therapist cannot see a client’s nonverbal cues, and vice versa.
Consider a self-help group. Not all psychological problems require the aid of a professional. In the United States, an estimated 7 to 15 million adults belong to self-help groups (online and in person) for every possible problem—for alcoholics and relatives of alcoholics; people suffering from depression, anorexia, or schizophrenia; women with breast cancer; parents of murdered children; people with diabetes; rape victims; stepparents; relatives of patients with Alzheimer’s disease; and people with just about any other concern you can think of. Self-help groups can be reassuring and supportive in ways that family, friends, and psychotherapists sometimes may not be. For example, people with disabilities face unique challenges that involve coping not only with physical problems but also with the condescension, hostility, and prejudice of many nondisabled people (Linton, 1998). Other disabled people, who share these challenges, can offer the right kind of empathy and useful advice.
However, keep your critical-thinking skills with you: Self-help groups are not regulated by law or by professional standards, and they vary widely in their philosophies and methods. Some are accepting and tolerant, offering support and spiritual guidance. Others are confrontational and coercive, and members who disagree with the premises of the group may be made to feel deviant, crazy, or “in denial.”
Choose self-help books that are scientifically based and promote realistic goals. You can find a self-help book for every problem, from how to toilet-train your children to how to find happiness. Critical thinkers can learn how to distinguish good ones from useless ones. To begin with, good self-help books do not promise the impossible. This rules out books that promise perfect sex, total love, or high self-esteem in 30 days. (Sorry.) Truly helpful books are not based on the author’s pseudoscientific theories, armchair observations, or personal accounts. People who have survived difficulties can tell inspirational stories, of course, but an author’s own experience and vague advice to, say, “find love in your heart” or “take charge of your life” won’t get you far. In contrast, when self-help books propose a specific, step-by-step, empirically supported program for the reader to follow, they can actually be as effective as treatment administered by a therapist—if the reader follows through with the program (Rosen et al., 2015). One such book is Changing for Good (Prochaska, Norcross, & DiClemente, 1994), which describes the ingredients of effective change that apply to people in and out of therapy.
Because the world is full of therapies that lack empirical support, it takes knowledge and critical thinking to tell the good ones from the harmful ones, the real from the phony, and the phony from the fraudulent. But as long as people yearn for a magic bullet to cure their problems—medical, psychological, or technological—quick-fix solutions will find a ready audience. If you or someone you know is thinking about getting help with a problem, the video Finding a Therapist If You Need One offers some useful guidelines.

Watch

Finding a Therapist If You Need One

How Do You Take Care of Your Mental Health?

Epilogue

Taking This Book With You

You’ve come a long way since you began this book. As your course draws to a close, we invite you to stand back and ask yourself what you have learned from all the topics, studies, and controversies you’ve been studying. Can you identify some fundamental principles and findings that you can apply to your own experiences? If the theories and findings in this book are to be of long-lasting value to you, they must jump off the printed page and into your daily life.

The four general perspectives introduced way back in Chapter1 suggest some questions to ask when considering an issue or problem that matters to you. When you are distressed, the biological perspective directs you to ask what is going on in your body. Do you have a physical condition that could be affecting you psychologically? Are alcohol or other drugs altering your ability to make decisions or act as you would like? The learning perspective directs you to focus on the reinforcers and punishers in your environment. What consequences are maintaining behavior you would like to change (your own or someone else’s)? The sociocultural perspective reminds you to analyze how friends and relatives support or hinder you in achieving your goals. Are you comfortable with the role you are playing as a man or a woman, romantic partner, family member, student, or employee? The cognitive perspective directs you to analyze your thoughts about your situation. Are you brooding too much, rehearsing negative thoughts? Can you accept information that challenges your beliefs, or is the “confirmation bias” getting in the way?

A good way to start applying specific psychological concepts is to review the key terms at the ends of each chapter in this book—say, cognitive dissonance, positive reinforcement, or locus of control—and think of ways they apply in your own life. As you’ve learned in this course, psychological findings can also be applied to larger social issues, such as disputes between neighbors and nations, prejudice and cross-cultural relations, improving children’s school achievement, or reducing crime.

Most of all, we hope you’ll realize that the best way to take this book with you is to practice the principles of critical and scientific thinking it emphasizes. Old theories may give way to new ones, findings may be modified by new evidence, but the methods of psychology continue, and their hallmark is critical thinking.

—The Authors