Francisco J. Martínez: "We have begun to medicalize emotions"
Francisco J. Martínez He has a degree in Psychology, a Master's degree in Clinical Psychopathology from the Ramón Llull University, a Master's Degree in Community Mediation from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a Master's Degree in Psychosocial Intervention from the University of Barcelona.
Currently he combines adult psychotherapy in his private practice with teaching in the Master of Clinical Practice Online of the Spanish Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Clinical Psychology (AEPCCC). He is also the author of articles on psychology in magazines such as Smoda "El País", Blastingnews and Psychology and Mind.
Interview with the psychologist Francisco J. Martínez
In this interview we talked with him about how psychology has evolved, how emotions are managed from health and how personal relationships and social phenomena affect our mind.
1. Does your conception of what mental health have changed since you practice as a psychologist, or is it more or less the same as what you had during your university career?
The career of psychology as I remember it put great emphasis on understanding the mental health of people through clear, reliable and determinant diagnoses that obviated the motivations for which the person goes to the psychologist. We imbibed manuals concerned with dissecting the symptoms and finding correct diagnoses with which we can work using appropriate techniques for this or that disorder. All this works. Clear. But it obviated that the person who approaches the psychologist restless for his mental health, usually tells you that he does not control his emotions. He is sad, angry, upset, demoralized ... He suffers mentally.
I like to explain to patients that a correct mental health is one that allows the expression of each and every one of our emotions. If we imagine that our mental health is an old radio with two buttons, the emotion would be what each of the channels is. If the button is broken, you can not tune all channels, one emotion prevails over another.
The volume would be our second button. It would be the intensity of the emotion. Adjusting the volume according to our own opinion is what will help us to be able to listen to our favorite programs at the desired volume. Going to therapy in many cases serves to discover that there are channels that we do not tune in or that maybe we are listening to the radio too high or too low.
2. How do you think the way in which people relate to each other has an impact on their mental health?
Something that is quite mystified is the reason why people come to consultation. Some think that they approach in the search of the knowledge of oneself, of the reasons for which they suffer mentally. Of course this is important, but at first what they usually request is to help them integrate socially.
The way they relate to others fills them with dissatisfaction. They wish not to be seen or perceived as "strangers." The starting point is that the mental is essentially relational and that a mind can not be constructed isolated from other minds. Since we are born is close, the environment of the child is what provides it so that it has a trained mind to face the obstacles and positive experiences that life has.
3. In research it is very common to believe that psychological processes can come to be understood if small parts of the brain are studied separately, rather than studying the interaction between elements or social phenomena. Do you think that the slope of psychology based on the social sciences has to learn more about psychobiology and neuroscience than vice versa?
Study mental disorders from the brain, the tangible, from psychobiology, neuroscience, can be very good. But leaving aside the mental, the influence of society, is hopeless. Explained in more detail. If what we are looking for is the understanding of depression, anxiety, panic, schizophrenia, in short everything we can understand as mental suffering, dissecting towards the "micro" (genetics, neurotransmitters) we will omit what makes us particularly humans.
In order to understand mental suffering, we must know what happens during our learning, which are our affections, our relationships, our family systems, our losses ... All this is impossible to achieve if we want to reduce it to the interaction between neurotransmitters and the study of genetics. If we understand it from this perspective, we will be very lost. We thus fall into an extremely reductionist vision of the human being.
Four.In an increasingly globalized world, some people emigrate because of the possibility of doing so and others because of obligation. In your experience, in what way does the migratory experience in precarious conditions affect mental health?
Those who emigrate do so with expectations of growth (economic, educational ...). In large part, emigration is preceded by states of precariousness. For years I have been able to accompany people who emigrated with high expectations of improvement. Many of them had put years of life and all their savings in order to break poverty and help their families.
Much of the work to be done by psychologists and social workers is aimed at reducing the high hopes previously deposited. Many psychological theories relate levels of depression or anxiety with discrepancies between idealized expectations and actual achievements. Arriving at the chosen destination and continuing to live in a precarious state on occasions even worse than the one of departure is clearly a bad indicator for the reach of a correct mental health.
5. Do you think that the way in which the migrated people face suffering differently according to the type of culture from which they come, or do you see more similarities than differences in that aspect?
I would say that there are more similarities than differences when facing suffering. From mythology, migration is presented as a painful and even unfinished process. The religion with Adam and Eve or the mythology with "the tower of Babel", explain to us the loss that supposes the search of the "forbidden zone" or the desire of the knowledge of the "other world". Both one and another search or desire end with unfortunate outcomes.
In the first place, I consider "universal" the feelings shared by those who emigrate. They live a separation more than a loss. Nostalgia, loneliness, doubt, sexual and affective misery design a continuum of emotions and experiences dominated by ambivalence.
In second place it is a recurring duel. You can not avoid thoughts about the return. The new technologies allow the immigrant to be in contact much more easily than before with the country of origin. In this way, the migratory duel is repeated, it becomes a recurrent duel, because there is excessive contact with the country of origin. If not all migratory experiences are the same, we can accept that in the great majority all these budgets are given.
6. Increasingly there is an increase in the consumption of psychotropic drugs worldwide. Given this, some say that this medicalization is excessive and there are political motivations behind, while others believe that psychiatry is unfairly stigmatized or maintain intermediate positions between these two positions. What do you think about the subject?
Psychiatry and pharmacology are of great help in many cases. In severe mental disorders they are very helpful. The problem with which we are currently is that we have begun to medicalize emotions. Sadness, for example, is usually mitigated through psychotropic drugs.
The "normal sadness" has been pathologized. Think of the loss of a loved one, the loss of work, a couple or any day-to-day frustration. That psychiatry and pharmacology take over this "normal sadness" treating it as a mental disorder makes the message that arrives something like "sadness is uncomfortable, and as such, we must stop living it". Here the pharmacological industry is where it acts in a perverse way. Much of their motivation seems to be to obtain significant benefits through the medicalization of society. Luckily we have great professionals in psychiatry who are reluctant to overmedicate.
