The Mental Health Paradigm

Mike & Friends Blog

Marc Adler

I'm a recent graduate of NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and a freelance journalist who runs a blog, The Bloody Crossroads

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September 3rd, 2011 6:46 PM

Social worker Shulamis Lieber claims “the only people benefiting are the insurance agencies:”

By Marc Adler

Shulamis Lieber, a social worker from New York City who works for a nonprofit called The Institute for Family Health and specializes in mental health for HIV patients, is on the front lines of America’s health care crisis. She has three years of experience in the field and sees first-hand how for-profit healthcare and draconian budget cuts are destroying careers and harming patients.

Over the past 10-15 years, she says, the mental health paradigm has shifted away from long-term therapy, in which the patient spends roughly 45 minutes with a professional talking about problems and digging for root causes of distress, to short-term, concrete therapy, in which patients are given medication and engage in problem solving exercises designed to help them take their medicine, focus on things that give them pleasure and transcend barriers to achieving structure in their daily schedules. “Many patients have a real need for and interest in doing long- term therapy,” Shulamis says. “An average mental health session used to be 45 minutes to an hour, and now they’ve really cut that. My average meeting time with a patient is 15 minutes, 30 minutes tops, and it’s really a huge difference and huge cutback because the people need more time to feel like they can trust their therapist and develop a unique bond"... Continue Reading