The Center for Professional Psychology - Articles-Managed vs. Psychotherapy
Managed Care treatment is not Psychotherapy as we have been learning about for the past 100 years or so. It is a financial or insurance system designed to help people get back on their feet once they have stumbled, a laudable goal. However, many of us want to learn about ourselves, want to explore our own internal worlds, want to find out why we get in our own way, why we may place obstacles between us and our goals, why we may not be happy or content in the world, why we may choose the wrong partners, why we may not be succeeding, why we may not be moving forward, etc., etc. If one only listened to the managed care philosophy then one would think that all psychotherapy had to offer was the former, that psychotherapy was for getting ourselves back to that spot from which we fell only a few months ago. While this may be true for managed care treatment real psychotherapy is much more ambitious and follows a much different set of philosophical and ethical principals.
I am making these points so that consumers can begin to differentiate between psychotherapeutic treatment that places their needs first and a management of symptoms which characterizes managed care companies. The term managed care is no mistake. Your care is managed and it is managed in order to contain costs that they maintain have been spiraling out of control. One of the major problems with this sort of system, of course, is that cost containment and profits come before their clientís services Although medical care costs may have risen astronomically mental health care costs have not although they are kept under the same medical umbrella by these companies because the mental health professionals and clients have, traditionally, been much more vulnerable to outside influences than normal medical care. This is because there has been a real set of stigmas people have applied to mental health and mental health clients thereby making it more difficult for the mental health profession to fight back against the incursions of the managed care companies. Therefore, the managed care companies have been taking advantage of the mental health field and cutting back their fees for professionals and services for their clients. And, by cutting therapistís fees they limit the professionals capacities to speak up for themselves and for their clients.
Ultimately, I am not saying that managed care treatment is not good. What I am saying is that psychotherapeutic care is much more ambitious, more effective, much more of a model for the treatment of the whole person, and much more of an advocacy system for their clients. Furthermore, the latter is a system which, because it respects the individual, demands confidentiality, privacy and freedom of choice for their clients. The managed care companies have been violating these rights for years because they are a profit-driven system and we are a care-driven one.
Charles I. Zadikow, Psy.D., January, 1998
© 1998-2010 American Mental Health Alliance.
