Before You Cut Off Your Parents: 3 Principles to Consider

What about the question "What might the children have done to provoke their parents?" Reality is that not too many counselors get to hear both sides of the argument.

Or, remembering my dear mother, who had a coffee cup noting "Grandchildren are the reward you get for not strangling your teenagers", and told me when I was 15 that I was a much nicer person to be around than the previous year. It doesn't justify every parental behavior, but the reality is that teens can and do provoke their parents, and that ought to be taken into account in this kind of situation.

Sometimes I wished my kids would cut me off :)

Back when my stepsister got married, one of the most poignant moments was as she realized that the "counselor" who had "counseled" her mother and her to walk away from their family was brutally, awfully wrong. Over the years, she's been tremendously grateful that she did not manage to completely destroy her relationship with her father, especially as that marriage was destroyed by her husband's infidelity and "coming out".

Long and short of it is that without that balance of perspectives, counselors, in particular those who struggle at "reading between the lines", will tend to simply mirror the complaints of the counselees. There are probably even a few counselors who've figured out that if they simply say what the counselee wants to hear, they'll get more revenue from repeat visits.

No doubt; there is a huge need for good mental health care, and it can be life-saving. But on the flip side, mental health care that does not hear or infer the "other side of the story" can too often make errors just as dangerous as not getting care at all.