It was a last resort, the author was in in-patient treatment in extreme circumstances in which she had had frequent suicide ideation. Therapies that aren't drug

It was a last resort, the author was in in-patient treatment in extreme circumstances in which she had had frequent suicide ideation. Therapies that aren't drug based, while often effective, don't work that quickly and are more of a long term thing than an immediately stabilizing treatment for someone in an extreme crisis. Drugs are your best (and only) shot in that kind of situation. There are plenty of places to get therapies like meditation and similar therapies relating to mindfullness - from psychologists who offer cognitive behavioral therapy and its offshoot mindfullness-based cognitive therapy. They're two of the very popular and widely available types of psychological therapies in the US. In this story I wonder if the author's insistance on going to her father's doctor has skewed her perception of modern psychiatric and psychological treatment -- the story took place in the 80s and if the doctor treated her father he had to have been kind if old, probably trained in the days when psychiatry research was in complete disarray and completely unsympathetic to patients' well-being and when the few popular psychological therapies that did not involve drugs or surgical treatment were things like rogerian therapy and psychoanalysis - not as effective as CBT and frankly based on little science. I think there is also a misconception that psychiatrists and psychologists are the same thing when they have entirely different purposes and training. Psychiatrists have med school educations, thus they deal with drugs (which are often quite necessary and effective) and acute in-patient kinds of cases more often. Psychologists have training which focuses more on effective treatments which are either are not drug based or work in conjunction with pharmacological treatments. They're the ones you go to for issues with the self or if you want therapies related to mindfullness or cognitive behavioral therapy.