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Australians are being urged to not follow the "American trend" of branding "emotions an illness" and then being coaxed into expensive therapies to rectify them.

Associate Professor John Pead, from the Melbourne-based Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, said this approach could distract people from making the lifestyle changes required to be genuinely happy.

He spoke to AAP after giving a presentation at an occupational health conference on Tuesday.

Dr Pead also told attendees how the mental health ramifications of major traumatic events - such as Victoria's bushfires - were often over-estimated.

"About 80 per cent of people who experience life-threatening trauma get better on their own, without medication or any other intervention," Dr Pead told the Occupational Health and Wellbeing Conference in Sydney.

"So the challenge for those working in this area of trauma is as much about not getting in the way of recovery as it is providing appropriate treatment."

Dr Pead later said Australians were living at a time in history that was "safer than we have ever been" in terms of the potential for experiencing a life-threatening event, and yet a worrying trend was emerging.

"I think we're much more into illness generation and medicalisation of human problems," Dr Pead told AAP.

"... Many of these are forms of unhappiness that people should be encouraged to do something about through relatively simple things they could do with their family, their workmates, their local doctor.

"It's an American trend to label your emotions an illness and then hire an expert to fix it for you ... getting into dependent commercial relationships with those experts where you see them once a week."

Dr Pead said people who needed counselling should aim to use it on an "as needs basis" and not routinely, as the key to effective treatment was that it be limited.

People should also be aware it could take real change - "like changing your job or changing your partner" - to strike a happier balance in life.

He urged workplace supervisors to become more literate about mental health issues, while being aware the "majority of people were much more resilient than previously thought".

Dr Pead said supervisors should also know that staging a "debriefing" session a day or so after a traumatic workplace event was now seen as counter-productive.

A person's most potent means of support was their family or friends, workmates or local community members, and it was normal for people to experience "temporary distress" after trauma.

He said professional counselling should start if this distress continued for more than about two weeks after the traumatic event, or if it was initially "severe".

"Seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist is not the first line of intervention really for dealing with problems of trauma," he also told conference attendees.

"Family and work, the workplace, are."

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/920980/dont-treat-emotions-as-illness-expert/?rss=yes