Chris McClelland, Author

  Conclusion: A Better Way People in Utah and all over this country must address this very urgent need for an emphasis on mental health in this country.  Not the pseudoscience of Truth and Distortion but logical, and results-based therapeutic treatments like Rational Emotive Therapy.  The results of the de-emphasis on mental and spiritual healing in this country are beyond alarming.  The amount of public mass killings has sky -rocketed, and the social disintegration of cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York is shocking and explains much.   By any measure, much of this country would be considered disintegrating into anarchy.  We have an ineffectual leadership on the federal level at best, and a social structure that is fast imploding.   But there is a solution.  Federal, state and local laws promoting sound mental health policies, more funding into treatment and research of mental health issues, particularly the causes and solutions of mental illness that ends in extreme v

  What Is Rational Emotive Therapy?  (RET)  When depression or anxiety hit, most of the time it is rooted in thoughts that are irrational or illogical.  RET is a proven way to argue against these deceptive and shaming beliefs and replace them with more accurate, more logical beliefs that more clearly mirror reality to us.  I will start this explanation with a thought experiment inspired by the Utah case that would point the way to a more healing approach to mental and emotional problems. My example is the parent who is faced with a teenager who has been breaking boundaries regarding behavior, say with internet phone use with their peers.  Parents have a wide range of “punishments” or “consequences” for such things.  But to force the child to sleep on his or her floor for seven consecutive months without a bed, and later send the child to a “wilderness camp” that nearly kills him or her?  I mean, a good and well-qualified therapist would be much more reasonable in suggesting consequence

  Defining the Crisis This one instance is just a recent example of the dangers inherent in allowing those without training or license to practice as mental health professionals, so the first step would be to gather the experts in mental health and spiritual fields to train and speak to professionals regarding what constitutes sound mental health, and establish, based on the Utah state model, a licensing procedure for “life coaches”.  I have known many with less knowledge and experience in the mental health field than I have that have hung out their shingles as “life coaches”.  I personally am not writing this essay as a qualified mental health professional.  Think of this document as a letter to the editor from a concerned constituent of Utah and the US.  It is intended as an opinion piece.  Like I mentioned, I am no journalist, nor do I want to write about this particular case as “hard news”.  What I am interested in is how people can easily get off track when the “life coach” role a

  In the next few blogs, I will be outlining and filling in some ideas I have regarding the mental health crisis we face in this country.  I do this as a concerned, active, thinking citizen, and as someone who has endured abuses while seeking help for mental/emotional issues. In this first blog, I will share the introduction to the essay. Peace, Chris Introduction There is a fact-based case playing out right now in the Utah legal system regarding the role of untrained and poorly trained therapists and their abusive impact on the vulnerable.  But I am leaving reportage of the particulars of the news stories to the writers who craft it best: the news journalists.  My aim in this short essay is to draw from my own experience with the therapy communities in the West, particularly Utah, and from that experience define and comment on for the reader the “truth” and “distortion” that certain life coaches and therapists use to treat their patients’ emotional and mental trauma.  The philosophy o

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  Click As you can see from the title of this blog, starting 1/30/24, for the next three days, I am giving away a collection of stories with a nonfiction memoir included.  Many of you have already bought or read this collection, but I am offering it for free for all who are interested. Today, I would like to vent my spleen about narrow-minded thinking in the creative world.  But first, sometimes a bit of stereotyping can be useful.  If a reader or viewer is looking for a cozy mystery, they generally know where to look.  Same with Sci-Fi, Sword and Sorcery, etc.  The same basic guidelines to good writing apply in all genres of fiction.  (See some of my earlier blogs regarding Aristotle and others' thoughts regarding conflict, plotting, character development, motivation and the like.)  But what I have found very recently is a genre beyond fiction that I haven't explored much in my writing life.  Poetry.  I have always been interested in writing poetry, but was never quite sure if

I start the New Year with many irons in the fire, as usual.  Ideas for essays.  Short fiction.  The foremost and most important one is the soon to be finished manuscript for A Contrite Spirit.  This is a novel that stretches the boundaries of what a “spiritual novel” is, and challenges preconceived notions about Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, and the struggle between them for the human soul.  Readers of my last novel, In Love and War, will recognize a backdrop of vicious combat from which a saner, more compassionate understanding between the two sides comes about.  Please know that violence doesn’t have to lead  to understanding (most likely it leads to just the opposite) but I believe we human beings have a responsibility to try to fashion meaning out of that which destroys meaning in the traditional sense of the word.   The main character, Hyrum, is an everyman who endures Hell on Earth and his spiritual healing is the focus of most of the book.  As his family grows and prospers so