The New Yorker recently ran a piece titled, What I Know About You Based on How Many of Your Friends Are Becoming Therapists. It was witty, filled with observations that many of us can relate to. The article indicated a trend we are seeing across the globe: many people in their late 30s-50s are now studying to become therapists.
After school, when I started to study psychology in 1990s, the career was seen as part of social work. While my parents supported me, there were definitely many detractors, saying I should choose a high-paying career. Now after working for over 20 years, I notice that therapy is having its moment. There is greater awareness, steps toward accessibility, and wider acceptance. At the same time, what a friend said rings true: “Mental health is the new avocado.”
The overhype is a dangerous slope. I wonder if mental health has been reduced to self-care, in turn creating a booming market for new products—candles, journals, proteins, supplements and programmes touted as an easy fix for complex mental health challenges. What I’m witnessing is a trend where wellness and mental health seem to be clubbed together. This detracts from the science of psychotherapy and research-backed techniques, leading to an oversimplified language surrounding mental health.
We forget that clients reach out to deal with anticipatory loss, grief, trauma or when they are struggling with a chronic or debilitating health situation, clinical depression, severe anxiety. There are no easy solutions for these concerns. The therapy process requires trust between the practitioner and the client, patience, openness and a desire to explore and work towards change. Confusing it with wellness creates a disservice and an illusion that quick solutions can be served in the name of “therapy”. At other times, this leads to requests from clients for specific techniques they saw on social media, believing these will make them symptom-free, forgetting that most mental health conditions can be managed rather than fully cured. In a country like ours where we are still struggling with licensing for mental health professionals, this over-popularisation is leading to two problems: too many unqualified people proclaiming themselves mental health experts and the dilution of what it means to be a “therapist”.
A client mentioned how a family member reached out to someone who claimed they could treat their anxiety in eight sessions. Turned out that while the person had a huge social media following and had dealt with anxiety, they were not actually a mental health professional and used the term counsellor based on a few certifications they had obtained.
Such experiences can impact how people view psychotherapy and affect the trust with which clients reach out to qualified mental health professionals. We have moved from not talking about mental health at all to using mental health terminology as weapons to slot people into diagnostic categories. This is reflected in sessions where clients often show me reels or point out how short-form videos have become a source of their information. Often, content like this overemphasises self-focused narratives while ignoring interdependence, repair, generosity and compassion. It misses nuance, context, diverse perspectives and most importantly, exploring the role we play in creating our own problems whether in our personal lives or relationships.
Therapy is a complex, slow process that may work for some but not for others. Clients should approach therapy with realistic expectations, knowing the process is hard.
But clients find their own answers and in their own time; we only offer a science-based approach, a safe space and witnessing that helps facilitate the change. Most importantly, learning to carry what we do as therapists lightly.
Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist and author.
