Therapists' Myopia

Boysmartphone.jpg by Andy Graff. Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain 

A major deficit in the thinking of many mental health professionals and therapists is a myopic understanding of various psychological phenomena. I have frequently written posts about them thinking that everything relevant to therapy occurs completely inside the head of an individual. Since humans are extremely social to the point of being tribalistic groupthinkers, ignoring how the problem behavior affects and is affected by social interactions – especially with kin – is frankly absurd. 

Family systems therapists do look at social interactions, but often go the opposite extreme and ignore what is going on in the minds of individuals. A smart therapists looks at both.

I first thought about this in regards to episodes of child abuse or domestic violence. Therapists want to know what happens, but neglect to ask about what is going on at home when the abuse is not happening – what’s the relationship like most of the time? Do other family members have some influence on events or ignore obvious signs?  What would happen if the patients spoke up? What do the abusers say right before it happens, and right afterwards? Literally dozens of other important questions like those.

Nowadays there’s a lot of talk and information about the problems created if children spend too much time on social media. Any untoward result like poor social skills or attention problems is automatically attributed entirely to the screen time without regard to what parents are doing at the same time as the child is online. While the risks that are spoken of do happen a lot, it is NOT the only factor. A recent study sorta proves me right:

              A recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics, showed parents “spending too much time on a smartphone can lead to slower vocabulary growth in children. ... Much of the research about screen time and developmental delays has focused on children, but parental overuse of devices may play an important role in their children’s growth-both by reducing the frequency of quality social interactions and indirectly reinforcing a non-ideal behavior.” Researchers found that “parental smartphone use accounted for 4.5% of the variance in children’s vocabulary scores.”

In some families the situation is much worse. In the families of some of the children who eventually develop borderline personality disorder, the parents are often on social media at the same time as the child. There is almost no communication between them for long periods, and the parents get annoyed if the child interrupts their own activity. But when the child goes outside, the parent shifts into acting like the proverbial helicopter parent, trying way too hard to make the child’s life as responsibility free as possible. And seems to resent having to do that but won't admit it.

Bad combination.