The are cases where therapeutic treatment is invaluable. More often than not though, with teens in particular, they struggle with growing-up issues, not psychological ones. 

We live in a culture that is obsessed with self… obsessed with happiness… obsessed with comparisons against some sense of ideal of how life is supposed to be and how things should work out… with a standard of success that is unobtainable for all but a few… whether it is how a person should look, how much money they should make by what age, how many friends they should have, what they should excel at…

There is a Chasidic Jewish parable that says:

“When a boy is obsessed with killing animals and drawing blood… Make him into a butcher!”

Now a days, we would send him to therapy!

Most of the challenges young people face are growing-up issues. They are not issues of mental illness or psychological disorders.

By treating them as growing-up issues like I do, I partner with them on their quest to sort things out, metaphorically putting a hand on their shoulder and saying “Let me give you the benefit of my experience”… saving them years of trial and error learning and freeing them from this absurd sense that there is anything “wrong” with them.

I find my cleints are starving to be told not only that they are okay, but also to be taught lessons and skills that work, that empower them and grow them into people who no longer struggle with the things that brought them to me in the first place… 

In fact, I find that most teens and young adults very quickly realize in this approach, the thing that has been missing in the others they tried.

This is journey to evolution, not a journey of healing.

This is why this often  approach works in so many cases where the conventional one did not.