Mental health is not the presence or absence of a diagnosis. Yet, so much of our healthcare system is based on diagnostic codes that dictate insurance reimbursement. Even more than that, these insurance pressures push psychologists to use treatments that are meant to target the symptoms of these codified diagnoses.
That might not sound like a bad thing at first, but the reality is that treatments for syndromes (sets of symptoms) are really inefficient at treating the actual cause of the symptoms. Sometimes you get lucky and the surface level treatment helps alleviate some of the underlying issue…but most of the time it is just a temporary fix. The reality is that we humans are a bit more complicated than one or two numeric codes in the diagnostic manual.
To be clear, having one of the diagnoses for anxiety, depression, or any other mental illness can be useful. It can provide access to psychotherapy, medication, and accommodations at school or work. However, a diagnosis isn’t a cure.
Treatment that is focused on the set of symptoms that comprise a diagnosis falls short because the brain is complicated and all sorts of underlying processes can give rise to a single symptom at the surface. Do you have racing thoughts because of a chemical imbalance, an unhelpful cognitive perspective, difficulties with attention regulation, or because life is just really chaotic right now?
Process-based therapy helps to identify the core process and target growth in this area rather than trying to simply stop racing thoughts. In the short term, you may not notice a difference, but over the long term, a treatment that targets the core process is much more likely to have lasting benefits.
All the best medical treatments target the underlying conditions that are causing illness. Psychotherapy should be no different. When it comes to mental illness and mental health, the underlying causes are key neurological processes instead of broken bones, viruses, bacteria, and the like.
The good news is that process-based therapy can help you to systematically target these core processes to better cope with mental illnesses as they arise and to cultivate profound mental health even in the midst of life’s challenges.
Reach out to learn how process-based therapy can help you thrive.
