According to Eva Klimová, president of the Slovak Chamber of Psychologists, you should be careful when looking for psychological help on social networks or commercial portals that bring together experts in mental health.
“I contacted one of these portals with the question of how they would guarantee the quality of their psychologists. They wrote me back saying they are professional. However, as the president of the Slovak Chamber of Psychologists, I know that a permit is also required to operate this activity. And many psychologists who offer their services do not have that,” he points out.
According to her, it is necessary for people to learn to distinguish who is a real expert. “It makes no sense to forbid ‘don’t go to him’, but you have to guide a person to be able to find what is really beneficial for him.”
In the interview you will also read about:
how to find your way around the offer of psychological services; what we should be guided by when choosing a psychologist; what you can do if you are dissatisfied with the course of therapy or the approach of the specialist; what “therapies” are brought to Slovakia by various sects; why, according to her, a change in the laws on psychological services is necessary; what psychology students write to her in their final theses.
When I think about how little information we had about mental health twenty years ago, I realize that today we have the exact opposite trend. There is so much that it is rather a problem to know about it. Do you feel it too?
Sure, there’s a lot of information; the question is whether the right ones. I see it as a problem that there is no clear client path in the field of mental health in Slovakia. I deliberately say “client” and not “patient”, because not always when dealing with problems affecting experience and behavior, a person has to have a label of some diagnosis and be a patient somewhere.
Imagine that you are the mother of a child who is suspected of having autism or some developmental disorder. You just don’t know where to go. They send you from one clinic to another, then to a counseling and prevention center, and then you get back to a neurologist or a psychiatrist. The system is unclear and complicated for clients.
A few years ago, there was a phase when it was very necessary to give people information about all the professionals who work here in the field of psychological help. However, it did not begin to be done systematically, which caused even more chaos. And with the proliferation of many different offers, a certain lack of quality has also come.
So let’s look at it from the client’s point of view. What would you advise a person who needs help today and can’t find his way around?
If you need psychological help, first of all it is good to have defined what exactly you need to solve. Whether it is your experience and behavior, stress management, various symptoms that could indicate a psychological disorder, or relationship problems, or, for example, performance problems in the school environment.
Once I have defined what bothers me and what I need to solve, only then can I search the system. If I think that I am ill, I fear that it could be a psychological disorder or, for example, I find it harder to concentrate, my performance changes, I should contact a general practitioner and, in the case of a child, a pediatrician, who should direct the person further .
As a rule, they direct him to the health system, so if there is a suspicion of a mental disorder, he usually gets to a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist or psychotherapist. If these are problems that affect children at school, the solution usually belongs to the school system – then the client is directed to the counseling and prevention center or to the school psychologist.
If it’s a problem at work (for example, you can’t find your way around the labor market, you need to set a career path, you have conflicts at the workplace), then you’re facing the problem of whom to go to. According to the current legislation, occupational psychologists may not exist as employees and provide their services within a company or organization.
Why?
Because occupational psychology has also officially been closed to the health department. It is the same with counseling psychology. If, as a psychologist, you are not an employee in, for example, education or the department of social affairs, then you may only provide psychological services to a client in occupational or counseling psychology as health care. So you can only go to an occupational psychologist who has his own clinic or works to perform an independent medical practice within the healthcare sector.
An ordinary person may have no idea about it. So what should he do to get effective help?
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