Demands for therapy shrink in hard times
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday October 22, 2009
New York has the highest concentration of psychiatrists and psychotherapists in the world. Weekly therapy sessions are routine, indicative of the city's place at the heart of capitalism and individualism, with a dose of Woody Allen neuroticism.Individualism asserts that all social and individual phenomena can be understood in terms of facts about individuals, and psychiatry has much overlap with such a world view.Disorders are located inside minds and bodies, reflected in the psychiatric diagnostic system that allows a practitioner to apply more than 300 diagnostic labels to a person. Psychiatrists locate problems not in culture, not in the economy, not in the social system and not in work, although these may all be considered "stressors", but inside individuals.How have the therapy obsessed responded to the financial crisis? A consumer psychologist at the University of Minnesota, Kathleen Vohs, has studied the effects of money on social behaviour. Just thinking about money made her subjects less likely to help strangers struggling with their belongings. Handling money made her subjects less sensitive to physical pain.She divided her subjects into groups, one of which stared at a screensaver of floating dollar notes and another at a screensaver of exotic fish. They were asked whether they would like to work on a task alone or with a partner. Eighty per cent of those who had been staring at the dollar notes chose to work alone; 80 per cent of those who had been staring at the fish wanted to collaborate.A few years ago Daniel Kahneman €“ winner of the Nobel memorial prize for economics in 2002 €“ approached Vohs and pointed out her research showed that money elicited archetypal American traits: self-sufficiency, self-absorption, individualism.She has since been looking at what happens when people reflect on money they have lost, synonymous with the recession mentality. She found her subjects were more sensitive to physical pain, social rejection and, in turn, more amenable to co-operation.New York has had a sharp increase in volunteering and enrolments in courses such as divinity studies or philosophy. A psychiatrist I spoke to reiterated a greater interest in group therapy among his patients, which he felt was part of a greater realisation that people who live in the densest social networks tend to flourish. These changes may be explained by greater unemployment, but it is tempting to assert a more community minded, reflective spirit is also a contributor.While fears that Australians, especially those in Sydney, also exhibit individualist traits en masse, our core ethos of mateship tends to dilute the extremes. We continue to have among the highest rates of activity in team sport and volunteerism. This is evident in television reality shows, where US franchises such as Survivor, which are built on conflict and abrasive egos, find their Aussie versions often full of co-operative contestants wary of appearing too driven or selfish.Individualistic societies have tended to do better economically. In the West we have a narrative involving the development of individual reason and conscience during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and then the subsequent flourishing of capitalism. According to this idea, societies get more individualistic as they develop.But collectivist societies such as India and China are rising out of their economic stagnation. As they come to rival the West but maintain a collectivist ethos, the ideas underpinning the free market such as rational choice and individualism become less certain.Unsurprisingly, the same societies have much less interest in seeing psychiatrists despite predictions that mental illness will contribute most to their health burden. Many mental health professionals in the West will attribute this to a greater stigma surrounding mental health.The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote during the Beijing Olympic Games last year that the opening ceremony €śwas part of China's assertion that development doesn't come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones ... The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out tobe as attractive as the ideal of theAmerican Dream.€ťAustralia is a relatively individualist nation riding the coat tails of a collectivist Asia.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
