Free consultation on mental health

The public welfare service projects of public mental health centers, the public welfare consultation batches of university psychology centers open to the society, the public welfare consultation port of certified psychological service platforms, and the psychological service posts of street community social work stations.

When I was on duty at a community psychological service, I just met a 22-year-old girl last week. She had just resigned from a job where her wages were deducted for no reason during the probation period. The rented house caught up with the landlord's rent increase. She lay awake until three in the morning for more than ten days in a row. She paid hundreds of dollars for an hour of consultation. She gritted her teeth several times and did not dare to make an appointment. In the end, the community grid officer pushed the QR code for public welfare consultation to her.

She was always a little embarrassed during the first two consultations, fearing that her problem was "too small and not worth bothering others with". After the third conversation, she went around to the front desk and stuffed me an orange when she was leaving. She said that she fell asleep with her head on the pillow the night before, and finally she no longer had to stare at the ceiling and count sheep until dawn.

Of course, I often encounter people asking, can free consultation be useful? Could it be that all newbies are trying to train on me? There are indeed different voices in the industry on this issue.

Most counselors who prefer psychoanalytic motivation will emphasize that payment is a very important setting in the counseling relationship. Without the constraints of economic costs, it is easy for visitors to break appointments at will, conceal their true emotions, and even have unrealistically high expectations for counseling because "no money is spent anyway", which is not conducive to the advancement of counseling. However, most counselors who adhere to cognitive behavioral (CBT) and short-term focus solution orientation believe that for those who are new to psychological counseling and have limited affordability, free consultation of a public welfare nature is the best choice to lower the threshold. After all, many people do not even know the basic concept of "psychological counseling is not just a daily routine". It is simply unrealistic to directly ask them to spend thousands for long-term consultation.

More than half of the public welfare consultants I have come into contact with are certified consultants with more than 3 years of case experience. Many people come to work in public welfare positions in order to accumulate case experience for specific groups or to complete the public welfare service hours required by the industry. Novice consultants will also have supervisors to guide them throughout the public welfare cases. As long as they come through formal channels, there will basically be no "responsibility for practicing with others".

But let’s be honest, free consultation does have its boundaries. Generally speaking, the duration and total number of public welfare consultations are strictly limited. Most of them are 45-50 minutes per session, and the total number of times is no more than 8 times. It is only suitable for solving short-term, specific confusions - such as the recent preparation for exams and the emotional collapse, after having an argument with my partner for half a month, and the internal friction that has just entered the workplace and is not used to it. These are no problem. However, if you have been diagnosed with a mental illness such as depression or bipolar disorder, or you need to sort out long-term issues such as childhood trauma or family of origin issues, free consultation can play a very limited role. At most, it can only provide emotional counseling between medical appointments, and cannot replace formal treatment and long-term consultation.

As for how to distinguish formal free consultation? It's actually simple. The kind of people who message you privately and say "help you solve all your psychological problems for free" and "guarantee you to get out of depression" are most likely either scammers or people selling courses. Formal public welfare consultations will have a clear appointment process, informing you in advance of the qualifications of the consultant, the confidentiality rules of the consultation, the duration and frequency limit, and they will not ask you how much pain you are in and whether you will pay for the subsequent treatment.

When I was doing public welfare counseling at a university psychological center, I met a sophomore boy who initially failed three courses for fear of being dropped out of school and was so anxious that he couldn't eat. After four free consultations, his mood stabilized and he took the initiative to make an appointment for a paid long-term consultation to sort out the inferiority complex caused by his father's requirement since he was a child that he "must be number one in the exam."

You see, free consultation is never a "second best option." It's more like the tasting package the store hands you when you pass by a milk tea shop - take a sip, buy it if you like it, and there's nothing to lose if it doesn't suit your taste.

It's much more cost-effective than holding back your emotions and having to spend more money on going to the hospital to get medicine in the end, right?