When "help" is actually "extended harm"

Kate, at SDA has a brilliant post up about the dangers of modern psychological "help":

A few years ago a friend revealed, almost matter-of-factly, that as a young teenager she had been the victim of a gang rape. She jumped through the counselling hoops of conventional psychological wisdom until the day she realized that she was still wallowing in the event, stretching a brief trauma into an extended one. She decided instead to accept what happened, put it behind her and get on with her life. She never looked back.

While not everyone has that type of strength, her story does tell us something. If we want to help victims of sexual crimes regain normalcy, it's time that society and the justice system stop sending mixed messages. We claim there is no shame in being a victim of sexually based crime, then try the cases in courts that "protect" identities and ban publication of testimony. We applaud their courage, then use "fate worse than" hyperbole equating rape with murder, as though the truly couragous victim would have choosen death over submission.

This is a specific case of the general problem: by automatically assuming that any serious or tragic event in one's life is something that requires counselling, assistance, and ongoing (sometimes life-long) psychological care, we downplay or completely override the ability of the human mind to recover its equilibrium unaided. Some people certainly do need more than casual help, but for most people, an excess of counselling probably retards recovery rather than speeding it.

This is especially relevant today, as we remember the sacrifices of our parents' and grandparents' generations: many of them came back from horrific wartime conditions and succesfully re-integrated with civilian life. It wasn't easy, but it needed to be done, and — for the vast majority of them — it was done. It would have been taken as an insult to offer counselling or psychological assistance to returning warriors, even in those cases where it might have helped. Those who needed help were seen, fairly or not, as being weak or even cowardly. Theirs was a different time indeed.