Stephanie Adams

Most of the time, when I am passing by the George Bush Drive and Wellborn Road intersection in College Station, TX, I am on my way to the fitness center I joined last month. I am thinking about how I will get through an hour of painful Zumba. From now on, whether I want to or not, I will be thinking about the deaths that occurred there on August 13, 2012.

I tend to have a soapbox about therapy as a profession. You may have heard it. It goes like this: You don’t hear the words “innovate” and “therapy practice” together all that often.” ~ From my bog post Innovative Therapy, July 14, 2011. Sometimes, I’m glad to be wrong.

That’s exactly the situation David Mitchell Schwartz, 44, faced at Webster University. He’s filed a lawsuit against the university, who (allegedly) told Schwartz he “lacked empathy.” His story made a big splash in the news, and I think any counseling student needs to check it out. (Links are at the end of the article.) He believes that his criticism comes more from his (supposedly) anonymous commentary on a professor’s romantic relationship with a member of the administration than from a genuine concern about his ability as a counselor. Even if there is a genuine concern, he states that the situation was handled poorly from the beginning.

The recent death by suicide of reality television character Russell Armstrong, husband of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Taylor Armstrong, has sparked media conversation about the dangers of reality TV. But in my mind, the real danger here is the effect that his suicide could have on his three children.

These last two weeks I’ve realized something: You don’t hear the words “innovate” and “therapy practice” together all that often. Yet the idea of being innovative is in all the marketing books, and most therapists tell me they are desperate to improve their marketing more effectively. Why, then, is it so hard for us to marry those two words?