Before the pandemic I was working in a healthcare setting in various polyclinics where I come in contact with the medically ill. I claim to be no expert counselor or psychotherapist as I am not trained formally or qualified in this area. Nevertheless this blog post will give a simple overview of the helping profession. I still feel that with #WorldMentalHealthDay coming up on October 10, I would like to share a basic introduction on learning about counseling and psychotherapy as I had enrolled in the school and worked as a client relation associate at the same time.
Introduction to counselling and psychotherapy
The course started with an introduction to the formal helping professionals. They are counselors, psychiatrists, psychologist, social workers. Other professionals who often deal with people in times of crisis and distress will be doctors, nurses, dentists and teachers.
Why do people seek help?
To deal with problems in living
Examples of problem situations: self doubt, unreasonable fears, stress that accompanies serious illness, addiction to alcohol or drugs, failing marriage, loss of employment, confusion in adapting to a new culture, catastrophic loss, jailed because of child abuse, midlife crisis, lonely with no family or friends, battered by their spouses etc
Problem Situations Are
Complex and messy problems that people are not handling well
They arise in interactions with ourselves, with others and with the social settings, organizations and institutions of life.
Missed or Unused Opportunities
Resources that people are not using or opportunities they are not developing.
Why do People Seek Help?
To Live more fully
To uncover missed opportunities and unused potential
Examples: feel locked in to dead-end jobs or bland marriages, frustrated because they lack challenging goals, feel guilty because they are failing to live up to their own values and ideals, want to do something more constructive with their lives, disappointed with their interpersonal lives, burned out.
My experience
I still remember my vivid encounters working with the distressed and have to think on my feet on how to approach their problem situation. I felt that countless individuals have shared their private lives on their encounters with social settings, organizations and institutions of life. Many times I am in a situation of helping them make decisions to tap on unused resources. These resources are useful and practical such that they can affect their outcomes on the personal healthcare options. Often times, clients in need are in distress due to being in a transition from the polyclinic to the hospital or the nursing homes.
I got to hear personal stories of how they felt that had tapped on the help of institutions and encountered roadblocks and obstacles. Hearing their side of the story at the personal level, I have a better understanding of how public policy aimed at reducing reliance on welfare may create barriers for the truly genuine sandwiched class to tap on resources. I probably got to know the all familiar name of politicians that clients bring up whenever they have to appeal their cases.
Next, on the organizational level I do encounter stories of losses of employment from sunset industries through retrenchments where this could exacerbate mental health issues on top of physical health matters. This is where I could render the help that is genuine and my assistance needed to get financial application done procedurally correct as they are likely able to qualify for the minimum safety net.
For social setting, there is a lot of distress in terms of facing loss of limbs or being wheelchair bound. It had been a very deep complex challenge working with care coordinators, medical social workers, doctors and nurses to get as much help as possible for clients to get procedures for their financial application done.
Mental Health of healthcare professionals
Working with such an intricate network, going from doctors to nurses to get lengthy paperwork done is just a glimpse of what I knew about the healthcare profession. It is not an easy profession I believe as one needs to stay mentally resilient in the face of hearing human stories of the distressed and be present to them by rendering help that is personalized and contextualized to fit their needs.
It is a life experience that I think is highly valuable as I get to hear survival stories of the downtrodden and their survival instinct in the face of life adversities. With mental health in the spotlight in the pandemic, I believe the stress healthcare workers face has been multiplied in the face of so many uncertainties of how the Covid-19 situation impacts the healthcare system to the point of strain. For example, I can’t imagine having to make tough ethical decisions like planning for who uses the ICU resources.
I feel that to a large extent, more mental health resources can be given to healthcare workers. This is based on handling the simple responsibility of my own work and having known the overlap of directly working with healthcare workers and patients. Being in contact with this group of healthcare workers before, I sense there is a need for greater mental health resources catering to the group during the pandemic. It is good direction to take if public policies needed to be carefully made to prevent a systemic mental health issues like burnout in the healthcare sector.
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