WHERE WERE YOU AT 22?*

 * I just made up that '22' for the rhyme.  It's more like later 20s.

I haven't got a lot of faith or trust in psychologists. The ones I've known have seemed to have more problems than the people that they purport to help.

Today though, while driving and listening to the National Programme I listened to an interview by Jesse Mulligan of Dr Meg Joy (great name that for a psychologist) which had resonance with me.

The synopsis is:

In that space between our 20's and turning 30, uncertainty, stress and even depression can be part of the terrain. Our 20's are when we are making big decisions about jobs, money and relationships. Dr Meg Jay says too many people in this age group are over-medicated and over diagnosed with mental illness. She offers a different prescription for dealing with this difficult decade in her latest book, 'The Twentysomething Treatment: A Revolutionary Remedy for an Uncertain Age'.

Here's the link to the audio: 

DEALING WITH MENTAL HEALTH FOR TWENTY SOMETHINGS

I thought that Meg Joy came across very well. She has worked for 25 years dealing with young adults experiencing alienation, anxiety, trauma and loss and was suitably self deprecating of herself and her profession, confessing that with experience she corrects and adapts the jargon and buzz words that she and her profession uses. Refreshing.

We, as we grow older tend to live in quite a different world than those a generation or two younger. Joy's counselling of and later writing about twenty somethings indicates that while the same issues of abandonment, sadness, relationship failures, dislocation, anxiety, uncertainty and ultimately depression are not new and apply as much today as to people many many generations ago, the approach and treatment for them are quite different.

Today she advocates the 'skills over pills' doctrine but has adapted it to 'skills as well as pills' recognising that there are many cases where adaptive drugs are necessary but should be as part of a holistic approach to dealing with situations.

In Skills Over Pills, clinical psychology Dr Meg Jay sounds the alarm about a problem which has reached epidemic proportions: the over-prescription of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs to young people who are in many cases going through normal developmental challenges.
Our twenties can be challenging. Today, so many twentysomethings are struggling, especially with anxiety and depression, and yet we’re not sure what to think or do about it. In The Twentysomething Treatment psychologist Dr. Meg Jay explores why and unveils a ground-breaking approach that prioritizes skills over pills.
As a seasoned clinical psychologist specialising in the unique challenges of this pivotal decade, Dr. Jay dismantles the myth that twentysomethings are fragile beings and explains why medication is sometimes, but not always, the best medicine.

        Harper Collins review

I like this and wonder what a therapy approach might have done for me in my mid to late 20s when I went through developmental challenges. At the age of 28 I dealt with an emotional breakup, leaving a job, relocation to another city far from home, separation from friends and family, starting new employment, finding new accommodation, looking for new friends and basically starting a new life. These are important items on the list of anxiety causing issues that Joy describes. I seemed to take on a whole lot of them at once.

I didn't seek therapy and wasn't prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. I did self medicate with alcohol though, mainly good wines (with labels on the bottles) and top quality beers and spirits - I was in the industry after all. Maybe I dodged a bullet.

In summary, I addressed my issues, sorted myself out and got on with life. This is the way I was brought up and how my parents and their generation dealt with things. I'm not saying that repression is a good thing but taking control of yourself and managing your situation is. It is a bit of a 'tough love' approach I know but way, way better than being misdiagnosed and over-prescribed with dangerous and damaging anti-psychotic drugs.

A take-out I got from listening to the interview was that Dr Meg Joy said that in most cases, the people that she has dealt with and researched "get over their 20s". They mature and, unless badly damaged, discover better things, growing in skills, confidence and forming new relationships while making better sense of the old ones. I feel that I did that. The dislocation was hard but it provided me with a rewarding career and, a few years later a beautiful relationship that is still going after 36 years.

Joy said something like (you can find it in the audio) - " ... if you think that your 20s were the best years of your life then something is wrong. Things get better as you move on in life ..".  

It's certainly true for me.