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Ask Siggy is a question and answer site managed by an interdisciplinary group of therapists. Choose a response from the list. What do you think of the professional's advice? Would you propose anything different? What orientation do you think the professional follows? How does this affect the advice they give? (Be sure to identify the question on which you are commenting in the discussion group).
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I choose the bipolar dissorder and prozac one, a little odvious that its a biomedical approach but its a subject that interests me. The question is less asking for advice, but more asking for information. The doctor does talk about the paticient doctor relationship being very important, which I totally agree. The patient needs to trust their doctor, of course they need to keep there eye out for problems. I always thought that the best doctors are the ones that believe their patient when there is something wrong, and fin a different solution to the original problem.

I chose the gambling one, since my friend is an avid gambler. Unlike This sorry fellow that wrote the question however, my friend has a limit, and makes sure he's not in debt (that is, isn't losing more than $20). Unfortunately, the "professional's advice" can goes only so far, since she only suggests that the person look up some help in the phone book. More specifically, phone "the nearest mental health institution." I thought that this advice was pretty self evident; in fact, I think even a telephone operator would have been able totell him this information. I thought that a "clinical social worker" should have been more compassionate than just saying he should seek help from an institute...considering I'm sure he was looking for help from Siggy.
Anyways, I"ll read the one Angela just wrote, so I can reply to her issues

The person responding to the Prozac question seemed to be very well informed about the drug. It was good to see that the person asking the question got a good reply since i'm sure the person who was asking about the gambling question got nothing worthwhile. I agree with Angela that this question is more of a informative question than one of advice, but the Doctor who replied goes the extra mile to tell the person about as much as he can about the drug. He even stresses the importance of communication not only between the patient and the doctor, but with the patient and their relatives. The reason being that side-effects that come with taking the drug can have adverse effects, and people living with the patient should know about them.

I chose the response on counsellimg elementary school chidren. I think that this particular response was good because with children so small you cannot handle the problem any other way. You have to just answer to them and try to explain to them the best you can when they ask you questions which are almost alwayus related to why? Why this happens, why this is doing this, etc... I would not reccomend any other approach for children so young. The counseller handled it well. Explaining to the children and giving them examples on things often solves the problem. The professional handled the problem well as for if the patient was an adult rather than a child this approach would not work.

This keeps on erasing I just typed a big long paragraph and it doesn't post

Never mind it did post it just didn't show up for a while.

I went into the response that Angela did. I agree with Angela and Dave that this was mostly a information question. There wasn't really a specific question asked in this question it was more asking for information. The professional gave really good information not advice but good information.

Well, I read the one that talked about one person in a marriage wanting kids, and the other partner not wanting any (can you guess whether the guy or girl wants kids? ;)
Unlike the prozac topic, the response was more of advice; being very cautious not to give strong advice since the person didn't know too much about their marriage.

That's really interesting David, but for most of my friends and acquantances the man is the one that wants kids and the woman doesn't. I think it stems from the fact that most have seen their moms become burned out supermoms, managing their own job and the household and they do not want to become them. So I guess, the reason is the same as for the spouse in ths situation. Some experience in childhood.

The gambling one is hard because I don't know which area group therapy is under.

The dealing with children's greif comes from a humanistic approach because there is the idea that you should listen and don't judge the way that th children are feeling. I agree with Rubina that the advice was good, in that the advisor told the person of other resourses to look at. I don't think that any other approach would fit this topic (or likely the gambling one either)

I thought more on the prozac question and thought about the way diiferent approaches would look at the subject. The psychodynamic would treat a depressed patient by trying to find the root of the problem, they would look at the persons dreams, and other aspeccts of their life to try and find the problem and themn likely talk about it with the patient. The Humanist would try and increase the person's self esteem and listen to the subjects problems to try and reduce the depression. The cognitive approach would try and change the negitive thoughts to positive ones. At the operant therapist would try and change the behavior of the person.

here is our summary:
Instead of just conecentrating on one response from the various list, Angela, Rubina and I decided to look at a few and see the various techniques used by various people to answer the questions. As it turns out, more often than not, the response is in a from of advice, rather than information. The exception to this rule was encountered when Angela first read the response regarding the success of Prozac on bipolar depression. Since the question itself was more of a question and answer format, this was to be expected. The whole group agreed however, that it was a very well informed response, and Angela was quick to inform us that although it was more of an informative response, it still contained some important advice, such as keeping close doctor-to-patient relationships. The Gambling topic was a little harder to discuss since, although it was in the format of an advice, neither members of the group (including me) were able to determine what type of therapy the proffessional was using. If it were to fall into any category of techniques, I think it might fall under the heading of humanistic approach, since the social worker touches upon the idea of being able to deal "with the emotional issues, including...guilt." The topic of a "child's grief" seemed to spur more discussion in that the response was in the form of advice, and it was good advice, unlike the one dealing with gambling, which seemed only to redirect the help to a different, more experienced place. Not only did the professional give good advice, but by using the humanistic approach, he was able to fully cover all aspects of what to expect from a grieving child. We thought that the humanistic approach proved very advantagous in this situation, since it dealt strongly with emotions and how to deal with certain aspects of their grief (such as questions about death, God, and fairness). As Rubina first pointed out, and Angela later reinforced is the idea that the humanistic approach may be the only technique that would be most effective for this topic. The main reason for being that we should listen and not judge the way the children are feeling. Children are very vulnerable and delicate, and the professional states this very clearly by stating examples of what should and should not be done. If a biomedical approach was taken, The chances of further damaging the children would certainly increase, since it would be foolish to disrupt a child's physiological state with the use of drugs.
Overall, it seemed as though a humanistic approach dominated most of the responses from the topics. I guess that would make sense since alot of the questions found on the "ask Siggy" site were ones that dealt with topics that should be handled from a humanistic approach. The reason being that alot of the questions revolved around self-concept and how to promote self-growth (whether it was a gambler trying to quit, or children trying to cope with grief). Overall, we think the site is a good platfrom for which people should ask questions, since they provide good, sound advice.