You Don't Need a Diagnosis to Seek Help | Therapy, Red Flags & Finding the Right Support ft. John Cuturilo (Part 2)

Th- this is a generic comment that I get from a lot of people, that we are getting therapy, but we don't know where does it end, what we are getting out of therapy.

A lot of people complain that therapy is very open-ended, and I think that can be attributed to lack of clarity as well.

When you are struggling, then you don't know what help do you need.

The first step is to admit that there is a problem, and then seeking help, but then also understanding what help do we need, which is what we are planning to talk today.

So the first thing I would love to hear from you is in terms of a mental health challenge, when someone is diagnosed or someone is yet to be diagnosed, but they understand there is an issue, there are some challenges we are facing at a personal level, then how do we understand what level of help we need? Can we start from there?

Th- the level of help we need and how we determine that largely depends on what the individual's presentation is, which effectively is the, the larger combination of the symptoms that they're experiencing, the signs or the behaviors that they're experiencing that other people can observe, any risks involved, and what their individual needs are as well, and that entire set of factors constitutes what we call the, the presentation.

And what's important to understand is that when we seek help, we don't necessarily need to have a diagnosable...

Mental illness diagnoses, we should, we should say more specifically.

They're a form of scientific classification.

They're meant to be able to identify when a person is in a certain state where there are certain risks present, and those diagnoses have developed over many years to allow us to effectively share knowledge and develop treatments so that if there is a specific risk to someone, we can help them to mitigate that risk.

But even if your problem doesn't reach the threshold of being a mental illness, it doesn't mean that you can't justifiably seek help, and indeed, if you feel like you're stuck, then you absolutely should seek help.

So it doesn't have to be a mental illness.

It can be any type of personal struggle.

But-The, the level of help you need or the type of help you need largely depends on those factors that constitute the presentation.

It's quite disjointed.

There are a lot of different types of professions.

Some are licensed by the government and have their definitions very specific, whereas other types of professionals, like in my profession, counseling and psychotherapy, we're self-regulating, so the government doesn't have as much of a say in, in dictating who can use the title counselor and what they can do.

So people can find it difficult to actually identify what exists and what they can... and, and where they can seek help.

Or is it a more spiritual or deeply embedded problem? For example, are you feeling as, as if you're maybe lacking a particular virtue in your life? For example, lacking purpose.

Are there specific symptoms of disturbance? For example, are you feeling severely depressed, anxious? Are you experiencing sensations that aren't there? For example, are you hallucinating? Are you experiencing chronic pain, for example? Are there physical symptoms? Is the problem multifaceted? For example, do you have a mental health problem, but are you also affected by environmental problems like poverty, other medical conditions, family violence, domestic abuse, and similar? And what level of risk is posed in, both to you and other people? For example, are you having urges to commit harm against yourself or somebody else? Are you at risk of the problem escalating? All of these factors determine what sort of help you need, and in the most severe cases, if you're feeling suicidal or if you're feeling as though you might be at risk of hurting yourself or somebody else, the first body you should call is triple zero or the triage service, and they would then triage you to a psychiatric hospital, although I've not heard good things about people who have gone into psych...

people's experiences in psychiatric hospitals.

The feedback I've received has not been good.

But if there's no other option, then you may have to go there and be treated by a psychiatrist who is a medical professional who may provide medical treatment, so medicated treatment for, for mental health symptoms, and then refer you on to other professionals.

If you have a number of different problems that are both individual and environmental, then you may seek help for a s- from a social worker, for example, who many of whom can both provide m- psychotherapy but also provide case management, so they can help you link to other services.

If it's an issue that is not posing a significant risk to you but you're trying to process it and it's more of a spiritual disturbance rather than a risk to your life and health, then you may seek assistance from, say, a counselor who specializes in that particular type of area, like grief or trauma or life meaning, personal identity, life transitions, and similar.