A letter to a therapist

I once had a therapist who took issue with my needing to leave my workplace when I had mental health crisis reactions. Like many people in the mental and physical health professions, she was convinced that there were means to “cure” me that would enable me not to have to leave work (or whatever situation I was in) to take care of myself. In response, I wrote her a letter that turned into an essay about the lack of equity and parity between attitudes and treatments for mental health versus physical health conditions.

While going through my computer files looking for unfinished material that I could use to write a poem for the poetry class I’m taking, I found the letter I wrote my old therapist. I had forgotten about it, since it was years ago and my relationship with that therapist did improve after that (the particular therapeutic program I was undergoing at the time was for a year; once I completed the program, the therapy ended).

Therefore, as this is another old piece of writing that I’ve never published, I’m posting it on my website. I’m even including the introductory email to my old therapist to which the essay was attached. Unfortunately, the problem of lack of equity and parity between mental health and physical health attitudes and treatments still exists today.