Support therapy, supportive care, or support psychotherapy all are the same. Support therapy is the kind that helps people living with mental disruption, illness, or conditions. This is the type of therapy that greatly depends on the therapeutic alliance for helping the clients deal with issues like
- Lack of self-esteem
- Lack of relation with the reality
- Irregular impulses
- Negative thinking
- Alleviating symptoms
- Lack of ability to cope with stressors and challenges
Support therapy can help people navigate their issues with comfort, empathy, and compassion. The majority of the people experience emotional distress at certain times in their life. This makes it difficult for them to get through everyday life.
However, support therapy sessions provide the clients with comfort in such distressing times. Support therapy can be conducted in home home-based and clinical-based settings.
Home Based Support Therapy
Home-based support therapy is conducted in the client’s home or any other setting that the client considers home. This therapy type helps the clients facing difficulty in getting to private or mental health facilities due to several reasons. These reasons can be many like lack of funds/energy, being bed-bound, age, agoraphobia, work/home commitments, health issues, etc.
Typical Challenges/Issues in Home Based Challenges:
There are many issues and challenges that can occur in home-based settings. The issues that arise are mostly ethical and are related to the work-role boundaries and confusion and privacy etc.
Roles and Confusion:
The most frequently occurring issue is the confusion related to roles. The therapists are guests in another person’s home. They do not know the person fully and thus they do not know how to treat the client too. To fully understand the client’s circumstances, they have to talk and conduct professional judgments.
Having an unknown person in their home is already very confusing. The professional judgments and conversations at times can be the cherry on the top. Moreover, in the case of children needing therapy, the confusion can be even more. Making the children unwilling to communicate
Distractions at home:
The therapists also face many other difficulties like maintaining or gaining the client’s confidence. This can be due to certain factors like stuffiness, defiance, age factor, or distractions in the environment.
Maintaining Privacy:
Moreover, maintenance of privacy and confidentially also become difficult in homes due to the presence of too many people on the premises. This can at times even hinder the client’s ability to speak openly and clearly.
Needs that may fall out of the Therapists Job Scope:
Not only this but many concerns related to the work-role scope can also arise. There can be various tasks/needs that may fall out of the scope of the therapist’s role. For instance the client’s spiritual needs, personal needs, sexual needs, financial needs, etc. Even making the therapists do household chores or run errands for the client is unethical.
Financial Issus:
It is a known fact that home-based therapies or care are typically more expensive than clinical-based ones. Finances thereby must be considered by both the client and therapist before considering and accessing home-based therapy. There are many concerns that must be addressed beforehand to reduce the chances of issues occurring in the future like traveling costs.
The unsuitability of Home-Based Therapy:
Not everyone is a good candidate for home based therapy. There can be cases when the actual reason behind a person’s emotional and mental disturbance is their own home/family. Thus, some clients may feel uncomfortable or even unsafe in their own homes. Moreover, there is a chance of treatment being violated or hard to control at home.
