One thing that makes me nervous about a culture that is so quick to forward people to therapists, is that therapy is not some ironclad medical practice, like you might imagine heart surgery to be.
Therapy, and psychology in general, is one of the weakest areas of science, still based mostly on mysticism, large personalities, and weak statistical correlations. And that is assuming you even can get a "good" therapist, and not some schmuck who just happened to nab the degree.
I would go so far as to say that 90%+ of problems that are served in therapy sessions are better served by the regular participants in an intimate social network, friends and family, than some "expert" who is incentivized, knowingly or not, to send you into the pharmaceutical pipeline or, as this article describes, hand you a bunch of random labels you can forever use to psychologically handicap yourself with.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and humans abhor problems without definitive solutions. I don't think there has ever been a moment in human history where a civilization, when confronted with a great societal ill, has sincerely admitted that they have no idea how to solve it. Before science, natural disasters were the punishment inflicted by displeased gods on humanity, and through piousness or sacrifice they could be averted, or through divination predicted. Incurable diseases, especially psychiatric, were explained karmically or by folk wisdom.
But while we might have science today, we still have disasters and diseases. Instead of shamans and religious leaders, now politicians and activists promise easy solutions that are within arm's grasp, "if only the people currently in charge weren't so corrupt and incompetent." But change is incremental at best, and where it concerns depression specifically, it appears only to be getting worse.
Therapy, and psychology in general, is one of the weakest areas of science, still based mostly on mysticism, large personalities, and weak statistical correlations. And that is assuming you even can get a "good" therapist, and not some schmuck who just happened to nab the degree.
I would go so far as to say that 90%+ of problems that are served in therapy sessions are better served by the regular participants in an intimate social network, friends and family, than some "expert" who is incentivized, knowingly or not, to send you into the pharmaceutical pipeline or, as this article describes, hand you a bunch of random labels you can forever use to psychologically handicap yourself with.