Shari B. Kaplan, LCSWIntegrative Mental Health

Raising the Bar on Mental Health Care #mentalhealthawareness

6 Aug 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:57

In this brief segment, Shari B. Kaplan, LCSW, argues that the mental‑health field must elevate its standards for what counts as acceptable treatment. She warns that many non‑clinical coaches are venturing into therapeutic territory—offering vagus‑nerve and somatic interventions—without a solid grasp of attachment theory, belief systems, or the central nervous system. This hodgepodge approach can cause real harm, akin to the damage caused by bad medicine. Kaplan calls on the clinical community to unite and establish higher, evidence‑based standards to protect clients from ineffective or dangerous practices.

Chapters

I think we need to raise the bar on what we say is acceptable as mental health treatment, because there's nothing worse than bad mental health treatment. And I think there's a lot of coaches out there who aren't just teaching people how to organize their homes or their businesses. They're really going into this area of thoughts, not understanding attachments, not understanding beliefs, not understanding the central nervous system, and they're just going, here's vagus nerve stuff, here's somatic stuff. And they're just kind of putting it together in hodgepodge. And then people get hurt. Bad therapy hurts people, just like bad medicine hurts. But I think that if, if we come together as a clinical community, I think we could do better.