Blog #110; Intro to the Nationwide Mental Health Initiative

 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 of distortion enacted particularly on these vulnerable children in question is what led to the abuses that broke the headlines in 2023.  As time goes on, no doubt more abuse, and of more and more people, will be unearthed by the reporters on the case.  Meanwhile, I believe I am in a unique position to shed some light on how this crisis in the mental health industry in Utah blew up to such grave proportions.

 

In this essay, I will map out what a healthy, balanced Rational Emotive approach to illogical personal beliefs looks like, and how one can dismantle erroneous beliefs about oneself and others in such a way that one can clear the mental and emotional debris of false beliefs and start embracing a more positive and logic-based view of yourself, and others.

 

Next, I will outline the severe harm that certain “life coaches” cause when they attempt to practice therapeutic medicine without the proper licensing and testing.  Let me be clear: I am not a life coach.  I have personally benefited from many counselors over the years but I am hardly an expert in anything other than learning from my and others’ mistakes.  I have an advanced liberal arts degree from a major university in the South, and worked many years as both a professional writer and a college writing and literature instructor.  I consider myself a self-educated student of life.

 

At the end of the essay, I will describe the psychological harm outlined earlier and give tools that you can use to combat destructive beliefs about yourself and others.   It will end with a call to action where legislation on the federal level could be introduced in a comprehensive way to help those in this country struggling with mental issues find a more rational, peaceful way to co-exist with others.  I suggest nothing less than sparking an animated discussion including religious, psychiatric, and social leaders that together could fashion a very workable solution to this particularly troublesome aspect of modern society in our country.   In 2024, especially in America, it is more important than ever before that citizens learn to peacefully co-exist.  Our very survival as a society, and as individuals, hangs in the balance, as well as our way of life that so many have fought and died for over the decades and centuries.