It's good to talk but should counselling really be regarded as an emergency service? This article in The Times (9 June 2008) by Penny Wark intelligently reviews the assumption that therapy should be the first port of call after a disaster occurs.
Phillip Hodson from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy is quoted in the piece: "Life is full of unavoidable unhappiness and if you think that you should be in a permanent state of euphoria, you have misread the dictionary. Being blue is not a reason to seek help. Probably one of the biggest errors the therapy movement made was to support uncritical trauma counselling in the past.
"[Counselling is] a reflective process, not an emergency service. You can't counsel someone who's raving or in extreme distress; you have to access not only empathy and emotion, but also reason. Counselling is more than dealing with immediate disaster."
Well worth a read. Also take a look at the BBC News story about the University of Buffalo research which prompted the piece.
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There are also interesting pieces here: psychiatrist-blog.blogspot.com/2008/06/i-dont-need-to-talk.html and rachelnorthlondon.blogspot.com/2008/06/stiff-upper-lips.html
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