Most people put off asking for help. They distract themselves and wait for it to get better on its own. Deep down, they want to be sure it’s bad enough first.
In a Health Foundation and Ipsos poll last December, nearly half of people in the UK said they had delayed or avoided contacting their GP about a health concern. Of those, 27% managed it themselves or waited for it to go away, and 14% worried they would not be taken seriously.
I once wrote a page for a psychotherapy practice in Dubai. It was written with that reader in mind. She hasn’t booked yet, and she’s looking for reasons not to.
Most therapy pages open with what the practice believes. The question she came with is nowhere on them. I opened on it: whether her problem is serious enough for therapy. The answer sits in the next line. Pain is pain.
When I write for a patient, a reader who is trying to gauge whether it is bad enough yet, I look for the questions they want to ask, the ones they are too embarrassed to ask out loud. I then put the answers at the top.
The page still lives on their website. The clinicians hand it to people who come in, and to people still deciding whether to.