14. Joy Redstone: Compassionate Therapy, Counseling, and Poverty.

A person can look far less healthy than they actually are in moments of extraordinary stress. When we put ourselves in another person's shoes and we have some sense of the weight and the burdens and the stresses and the different directions they're being pulled in, it makes more sense, but we all seem to fall away from remembering that. When someone is fed, their kids are ok, they're housed, and they have what they need - that in itself makes a person infinitely more healthy. We teach a lot about the DSM in the clinic because it’s the language of the mental health field, but it's only a snapshot. I encourage people to remember that - that we're seeing a person at a snapshot in time. Whatever our judgement is about them–despite the fact that we're working in a system that calls for judgement and diagnosis–that it’s just a snapshot.