Support System and Family

¶ … Chase is an interesting one. Indeed, her symptoms are not overt or over the top but they are impossible to miss when a trained eye is affixed on her. It is clear from those symptoms as well as the backstory of Ms. Chase that she has a lot of skeletons in her closet and they are related to things like family, her lack of a social network or support system and so forth.

It is clear that she is isolated and struggling and thus any therapy or other methodologies to get her to a better place need to be focused on that. Lynn Chase needs to take control of her emotions and her life and she cannot allow herself to be held hostage by things that she cannot control. Therapy Solutions As noted in the abstract, it is clear that Ms. Chase is struggling very hard.

She is obviously facing many struggles in that she is one of the more responsible people in her family and she is clearly the outlier in this regard. She is clearly being worn down by the stress and she does not have the support system she needs nor does she have the self-initiative to take control and take care of herself rather than subjugating herself to others and their needs.

If she does not address this immediately and fully, it will lead to her mental state and mood degrading more and more and she will eventually have some sort of break or other problem sometime soon. She needs to exert control on her emotions and the path her life and decisions are taking her. While this will take a good amount of decisions that change the "rut" she is in, therapy is a needed and necessary step to get that process going in earnest.

Analysis One therapy that would surely be very useful for Ms. Chase is psychotherapy, otherwise known as talk therapy. This is true because it helps with a number of factors and issues that Ms. Chase is absolutely dealing with. It can make sense of things that have happened in the past, it can be useful in attaining goals and it can do wonders to improve relationships with family and friends, among other things. This therapy could come from a full-blown psychiatrist. However, any number of trained professionals could help.

In this instance, someone that has experience with family dynamics and relationships would be good. This is evidenced by the fact that Ms. Chase speaks about how her family is messed up, the family of her husband is/was equally dysfunctional and her childhood life was nothing to fawn over or be comfortable with. Indeed, she has lived with and within dysfunction all of her life and something obviously needs to happen to break that trend (Couture, 2007).

The other sort of therapy that would be very useful and necessary for Ms. Chase is couples therapy with her husband. If the issues with Ms. Chase are addressed but the issues with the husband (if any) are not, then Ms. Chase will almost surely regress at some point. Whether it be issues mutual to Ms. Chase and her husband or issues that relate to Mr. Chase in particular, the totality of what both of them are going through, separately and together, must be worked with and fixed itself.

As such, both Ms. Chase and Mr. Chase need to address their own issues and then get together and work with each other when they are to the proper point so as to allow them to do so. It is important that it be in that order because the personal issues of each person must be put in line before the two can truly put it together and mesh in the best way as a couple (Kumar & Rani, 2015).

Group therapy would not be useful in this instance because the two people that need to be the focus of care at this point need to be Ms. Chase and Mr. Chase. If Mr. Chase will not get the help he needs, then Ms. Chase will need to progress on her own and explore the idea of a separation or divorce if Mr. Chase will not address whatever issues he might have.

While there are indeed people involved that might be useful to integrate into therapy later (family or not), it needs to start with them separately, then the two of them together and then anyone else involved. At the end of the day, the two need to focus on each other and exclude people that detract from their mental health if it comes to that. Specifically, Ms.

Chase must understand that she can only fix and work on her and that she cannot make other people do the same if they do not wish to. Anyone and everyone that presents himself or herself as a toxic or caustic influence to Ms. Chase needs to become expendable and that includes family. Ms. Chase should not have to take that from anyone, blood or not...marriage or not (Jaaskelainen, Holmila, Notkola & Raitasalo, 2016). Even with all of the above, there are some encouraging signs.

Her family is not in any legal trouble, so that is good. She has her diploma and a bit of post-high school education. However, she has no degree to show for it. One thing that is troubling is that she quit school to be home more and the hobbies she used to revere and love are no longer present in her life. Her religious nexus is fairly present but weak at the same time.

It would seem they are only going to church because they have a child and the selected a church based on proximity rather than what environment was best for them. There does seem to be a bit of family history of depression. As such, the aforementioned recommendations of talk therapy and family/marital counseling are probably spot-on. Also confirming the above is that there are a lot of separations and divorces in the genogram provided in the case.

Addiction also seems to be an issue on Lynn's side of the family given that her mother was addicted to alcohol and her father was addicted to work. Lynn herself apparently binged a bit on alcohol as a late teen and seemed to use alcohol to loosen up in regards to sexual behavior.