Mark Baxter

Some people don't have people in their life.

Some people have people in their life, but they're not actually emotionally connected to them.

Some people have barriers to getting meaningful work and so they don't have something that they're doing that brings meaning and value to their sense of self.

So there's a lot that we don't really have access to and there's this idea that there's tools and techniques that are going to help someone, but often that's not actually what we're doing.

It can be part of it, obviously.

And the thing about treatments and therapy is what we forget to keep talking about is that

Most of the good therapies get pretty much the same results.

The therapeutic relationship and the therapeutic alliance is the thing that's more predictive of outcomes.

And what we're trying to do is establish this kind of reciprocal, trust-based relationship that allows the person to experiment, to be curious, to be vulnerable in a way that they haven't been able to before, to find out about themselves, to take risks, to test themselves interpersonally.

And yeah, so that's a long journey and that doesn't take six sessions like under a mental health treatment plan.

It sort of takes a couple of years.

Yeah.

We do need to orientate people to maybe the sense that this is going to take some time.

But I do know because I've been doing this long enough that if people do stick to it and they keep showing up, things do and will get better.

I do have faith in that because I've seen it so many times.

So do try to encourage people to kind of stay and stick with it.

Yeah, that's well said.

I mean, that's a better predictor than the type of treatment.

So we're often looking for what's the type of treatment that best fits this, as if there's a manualised treatment that's going to be the right fit for a person.

There are lots of treatments that are really good.