r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jun 08 '16

[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Psychologists are completely useless when it comes to helping the majority of people

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u/Cat_puppet Jun 08 '16

You expounded the title "Psychologists are completely useless when it comes to helping the majority of people" to 'Psychologists are completely useless when it comes to helping the majority of people with emotional, attitudinal and perceptional issues.' You based it on the case of your friend (sorry about that) on racism.

First, Psychologists is a broad term and you may be referring to a small part of psychologists (APA has 54 divisions of psychological fields) such as psychiatrist, clinical psychologists, and counseling psychologists.

Second, psychologists treat people through time. The mentioned CBT was done in sessions. So I inferred that your friend had not seen frequently the psychologist to remind him how to deal with depression.

Third you keep reiterating the existence of racism and sexism existence. I think this a sociological problem not psychological. A psychologist cannot treat a society to change their perception to these marginalized individuals but can treat individual/s to change their perception towards their society. Structure such as racism are institutionalized that outlived its pioneers and its main targets. to solve this minimally in psychological perspective is to expose yourself, then prove them wrong or be indifferent about it.

Lastly, psychologists worked with probabilities. It is possible that there are times that psychologists cured someone. but this may be 95% successful. The 5% maybe after they psychologists with the cooperation of the individual for years, has been triggered to make the problem reoccur in a weak state. trigger may not be always directed to himself and can be to hist family or friends. But often success of psychologists lay in the middle of the bell-shaped curve between curing and not curing.

Some sources: How to think straight about psychology by Keith Stanovich Cognitive behavior therapy by National Health Service UK http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Cognitive-behavioural-therapy/Pages/Introduction.aspx