True (group) therapy for the masses ...
Draft thoughts ...
INDIVIDUAL
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MENTAL MAPS PSYCHO-THERAPIES |
MAPS PHYSICAL-THERAPIES |
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SOCIAL THERAPY? | POLITICAL THERAPY? |
SITUATED - META-COGNITION
'Social therapy' is very much a thing - an invaluable therapy and intervention for patients / clients and option for the multidisciplinary team. In form it may differ from the social therapy, industrial therapy encountered in 1977, with occupational therapy. Today, can I suggest that it has been diminished? Even as (in the UK) we have social prescribing, and very welcome it is too.
I still wonder if social therapy has been tainted politically, by its proximity to community?
Back in the 80s ... 90s ... I remember the mini-bus arriving with day care patients, people who had attended for years. Dependency was often a fact of life, for them, their family, or the choices were stark. and I've seen hints of dependency again. Psychological therapies were not offered as readily back then, and lack of engagement would have been the gate-keeper then and for many patients now. Day care is much diminished now, if provided at all. As a response to dependency, stasis this may not be a 'bad' thing, but what replaced it? How and where did people move on to?
Community, the original home and origin of the forum, the market place, and town crier has been left by successive governments to market forces. Now the High Street footfall is a sepia-coloured snapshot. Passers-by now, can read 'for sale' signs, 'units to let', see shutters, litter, pigeons on their break from 'being' online. The Ubers and e-food delivery enterprises now clog the roads, previously trodden by the clogs themselves (I've been told you could here them outside).
I realise there is a continuum at work here (and as 'group' in h2cm suggests - it does its work). A crossroads, hamlet, village, town, community, neighbourhood - with the exact position of some terms - 'community' (on the IND-GRP axis) for example, subject to debate.
The post back in May, concerning an individual therapy - New book: "Talking with a Map"
- has me thinking about the GROUP related domains of SOCIOLOGY and POLITICAL.
About therapy not individually, but a need to address the idea of therapy at the community level. You might call this a 'root and branch' review, and yes, this is the sentiment.
It is clearly more than 'levelling up'.
Stepping outside of the boxes (outside of #h2cm - the clinical context ...); this isn't a person with an illness. Neither is it an effort to instantaneously medicalise society (that's another post). The community (UK*) is also not best placed to self-care, to prosper - which would be quite a feat if it were possible.
Back in June, I saw tweet about WHO and the need to strengthen primary care; and the global role for primary care was highlighted in the previous post. I can't find the tweet now, but I think it was a global health call, as so many nations are still developing, even creating primary care.
Here in the UK (USA?) - like the longevity stats - we appear to be going backwards. Therapy here is not going to improve access to primary care, or correct the dental desertification the UK NHS is experiencing.
If I am true to the model - #h2cm - here as displayed above, then there must be group therapy equivalents. Not group therapy in the usual - psychological / psychotherapy - sense, but a real transition from the individual to the group as found in social and political terms. Perhaps, this can be summed up as the need to revisit and re-negotiate the social contract - if it were ever agreed? This is were healthcare and time must coalesce: the past, present and future. Our health systems need to change.
I need to work on this muddle!
*If I may be so bold.
The model is encompassed within situated cognition - meta-cognition and the spiritual.
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