Essay Behind The Appointment: Challenges Facing Mental Health Professionals

Behind the Appointment: Challenges Facing Mental Health Professionals A majority of people will face some mental health issue at one point or another, however those that deal with things like chronic depression, anxiety, or possibly worse, are often disregarded and overlooked in society. This leaves many individuals searching for someone to help them work through their issues, meaning mental health counselors can become a crutch for some patients. As one could imagine, this is both an emotionally and physically draining field of work, and even those who have an immense passion for helping others may begin to slowly lose their love for their job. Most of society may be uneducated or even just ignorant to the responsibilities and daily struggles pertaining to mental health counselors, however between the patient secrecy they are sworn to, the slow compassion fatigue and burnout, and the increased likeliness to fall into the problems they are meant to help fix, the field of mental health may be one of the most emotionally challenging one could choose. The first thing that some people may not consider is that mental health professionals are not immune to the same mental health problems that their patients face. Psychology Today reports that mental health
Some patients are a little more challenging than the next may be, but each one has his own issues and each adds a little weight onto the shoulders of the counselor, making it increasingly easy for the counselor to develop symptoms of a mental illness. The most difficult part of the whole situation is that they are not allowed to discuss these challenges with anybody, creating a sense of loneliness and despair, and often leading to compassion fatigue and burnout. Thus, the biggest problem in the field of mental health is simply surviving the