For sure. The first talk therapist I went to was right after it father died. The receptionist warned me he was very old, which I did not find to be a problem in and of itself. I don't know if that is the reason he told me basically that I would get over it and not to worry too much. After two sessions, I stopped going. I went to psychiatrists for drugs still for many years, getting slightly better then much worse as most people in drugs do. It took almost fifteen years before I went back to a therapist (last year) and started taking her seriously. Talking to my drug dealing psychiatrists I did not take too seriously, except for one. She did both therapy and prescriptions. She got mad at me when I asked for a slight increase in my dose. That was the last time I took drug dealing psychiatrists seriously. I left her soon after and a year or two later tapered myself off the drugs and started recovering on my own.

In retrospect, I truly wish I had not gone to any therapist and definitely not to any psychiatrist. My normal drug dealer was much more helpful and much less harmful than any of them prior to the therapy I started last year. Psychiatry, especially, is a fucked up profession and when the two are combined and done by the same person, the conflict of interest prevents it from working. I will likely never see a psychiatrist again. Regular drug dealers have more scruples.

It’s hard to bring up that point without being misunderstood. While therapy can obviously be incredibly positive, like any discipline it suffers from a large proportion of mediocre practitioners, and a smaller but more dangerous proportion of harmful practitioners.

My personal experiences with mental health professionals (over several decades, in multiple countries) were unhelpful at best, and at worst they included things like recklessly prescribing medication (within 10 minutes of the first meeting), relying on outdated junk science, pushing for more appointments/making it very hard to end the patient relationship, etc.

Considering that many people who are likely to go to a therapist are likely to be in a vulnerable place to begin with (doubly so for children/teenagers), the recent wave of blind faith in therapy and the belief that “go see a mental healthy professional it can only make things better” is reckless.

I'm sorry you went through that, both the relationship with the therapist and your family's lack of support. I hope you, your siblings and your parents are doing better now, but either way this seems an important warning to note.