A new study challenges the assumption that setting goals in therapy is always helpful. Researchers found that while some young people find the process motivating, others experience frustration, demoralization, and self-doubt when expected to measure progress toward fixed targets.
The findings suggest that a more trauma-informed, flexible approach to therapeutic goal-setting is urgently needed in school-based counseling. The research was published in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Conducted by Catriona Duncan, Jamie Hayes, and Mick Cooper, the study offers a timely critique of a practice often presented as universally helpful. While some students in the study did find goals clarifying or helpful, others described feeling boxed in, particularly when their struggles did not conform to the narrow logic of measurable change. For some, therapy became yet another setting in which they failed to meet expectations.
“Given that findings around the helpful and unhelpful aspects of goal setting and monitoring were mixed,” the authors write, “we would advocate for young people being given a genuine choice in these processes. First, young people should be given an option of whether to set goals or not, and both of these options should be normalised.”
You've landed on a MIA journalism article that is funded by MIA supporters. To read the full article, sign up as a MIA Supporter. All active donors get full access to all MIA content, and free passes to all Mad in America events.
Current MIA supporters can log in below.(If you can't afford to support MIA in this way, email us at [email protected] and we will provide you with access to all donor-supported content.)
Look, you need your head checked and you simply cannot do it on the internet. Because they too need their head’s checked! But I promise you, something so extroardinary came out of my mouth today which wasn’t ‘me’, whatever ‘me’ means besides the thought that says ‘me’. But OH MY FUCKING GOD: I was drinking a bottle of wine and belating the fact that I lost my spider monkey, and then the most profound discourse spontaneously flew out of my mouth, so honestly, if you have super-brains, I want you to hear this. It’s almost too profound for ordinary socially conditioned thinkers, but honestly, on listening to it back it is the truth, and I know it is the truth because I am this fucking truth. Believe it ziktids…. https://youtu.be/_CcdO3snaPs?si=i0Wu79pyVg49GNTL
Report comment
Normalized? When our legit, 501.c3 would be challenged to realize “outcomes” from our operational plan, (the organization no longer exists) is the imposing of a plan failing in part because the parties involved are not realizing each part is being created for a very different human being? Thus, does the pop-language to
de-colonize miss the concept of difference in meeting the “Other”? Even in the initial interview, exchange, how does the space hold healing essential to the realization in the trenches?
Report comment
“The findings suggest that a more trauma-informed, flexible approach to therapeutic goal-setting is urgently needed in school-based counseling.”
It breaks my heart that the scientifically “invalid” DSM “bible” billers are even in the schools, since the DSM doesn’t even allow them to bill for child abuse.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-child-does-not-have-bipolar-disorder/201402/dsm-5-and-child-neglect-and-abuse-1
“These findings resonate with previous research on young people’s perceptions of goal-setting, suggesting that a one-size-fits-all approach may not be suitable.”
Well, of course “a one-size-fits-all approach” is inappropriate.
“For young people still developing a sense of self, being evaluated every week can heighten self-criticism and inhibit the kind of open, exploratory process that therapy is meant to provide.”
Especially when the children are being defamed with the “invalid” DSM stigmatizations in “therapy,” which is what all of today’s DSM “bible” billers / psychiatrists / psychologists / social workers / CPS workers, et al do. And the insane social workers, who make up lies about the best and brightest, award winning, children of America, since the school districts are not actually “equipped to deal with the smartest American children,” are actually the DSM deluded / insane people. This is a societal problem.
“Additionally, clinicians must consider how their approach to goal-setting may inadvertently pathologize natural and contextually appropriate responses to life challenges.”
Well, since my personal experience with the reductionist, DSM deluded “bible” billers – many of whom I had to ask, in my “mean mom voice,” Does anyone here speak English? – is that they do not know how to treat innocent others in a manner, that they’d like to be treated.
“Ensuring young people feel heard, supported, and respected throughout their therapeutic journey is essential.”
Yet this is the opposite of what today’s DSM “bible” billers do. So we should get the scientific fraud based DSM “bible” deluded “mental health professionals” out of the schools.
“This study adds to mounting concerns that some evidence-based tools, while well-intentioned, may undermine the core principles of healing, especially when they are applied without sensitivity to context, culture, trauma, and identity. For young people still developing a sense of self, being evaluated every week can heighten self-criticism and inhibit the kind of open, exploratory process that therapy is meant to provide.”
I agree, let’s end the mass psychological and psychiatric drugging of children in schools, and the scientific fraud based psychologic defamation, with the “invalid” psychiatric DSM disorders, of children in our schools.
“In line with trauma-informed and harm-reduction frameworks, the authors call for a more collaborative, consent-based approach to goal-setting.”
Yes, the ending of all forced and coerced psychological and psychiatric drugging of innocent children should end … as should all such communications with our children.
“This study joins a growing body of research questioning dominant paradigms in school mental health.”
“the need for trauma-informed, context-sensitive approaches—ones that center lived experience, resist over-standardization (as the DSM deluded do), and take seriously the structural and cultural factors that shape young people’s emotional lives in and out of schools,” is needed.
Get rid of the “invalid” DSM.
Report comment
NEWSFLASH: no one seeking professional help should be expected to live up to some therapist’s self-serving agenda unless they personally choose to do so.
Report comment