The ‘Internal Family Systems (IFS)’ Therapy Model. Sociological, and psychological potentials.
I’m of the belief that internal family systems therapy can revolutionise the mental health, psychology, and sociological theories.
Its a relatively new form of depth psychotherapy. However, at the moment, the main issues, with its use as a mental health treatment are the following. I see there to be a lack of awareness about the modality and inaccessibility. The latter having twofold causes. Firstly, a lack of psychotherapists using the modality. Secondly, many people being priced out of accessing the psychotherapists that do practice the psychotherapy.
On a sociological level, I believe the understanding of the psyche that internal family systems brings enables us to better grasp our own operational dynamics. Therefore, it has the potential to allow us to better design causal systems towards preferential ends.
My current issue is I’m unaware of how to use/ develop my abilities to help maximise the likelihood that the potentials of the IFS model come about, and come about sooner rather than later.
I also think IFS is a great paradigm and could be really helpful for lots of people, and I know lots of other EAs who are into it—maybe we should have an “EA IFS fans” Facebook group or Discord or something? (If you’d be interested in such a thing, reply to this comment)
I’m not sure what to suggest about how to use your abilities to promote IFS. You could train as a counsellor (if you’re not one already). You could write popular books about IFS. Or you could try to get involved in mental health policy and promote it in health systems. I don’t know where you’re from, but in the UK where I am, the ‘go-to’ psychotherapeutic treatment offered by the health service is CBT. I’m not against CBT and I think it’s very helpful for some people, but it’s not useful for everyone and for all issues, so I think a person could have a big positive impact if they (for example) successfully persuaded the NHS to be more willing to fund and offer different therapy modalities, including IFS.
I would like to add that CBT looks like “the therapy for everyone and everything” as is the only one that has shown to work with more mental health-related issues, and probably due to its effectiveness it is the most validated within the NHS since it benefits (also in an economical way).
We should start checking the relation between costs and benefices before trying to persuade the NHS.