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I would like to add the following to the previous author's answer. In addition to the complexity of perception of the phenomena of psychology and psychotherapy in the understanding of society, in addition to a huge amount of quackery, there is another important factor. Skepticism often acts as a defense.
After all, working with a psychologist / psychotherapist is a considerable burden. Why? Because you have to admit that you have a problem that you can't handle on your own. We need to spend some time. We need to spend the money. It is necessary to spend mental and physical strength. You need to remember and tell something about yourself that you don't want to remember or tell. It is necessary to change the usual patterns of behavior. All this is not for a day or two, because even short-term methods of psychological help do not involve a one-time therapeutic session. And-yes, it may not help. Therefore, it is easier for some people to immediately pour skepticism over “all this psychology / psychotherapy” and continue to live with their problem. By the way, this does not mean that at some point, when the pripret is no longer childish, such a person will not forget all his skepticism and will not start looking for a specialist.
Well, and to the heap: in the national culture, in principle, quite recently there was a trend of applying for professional help of this kind. By the way, it is developing extremely actively, and now, for example, because of the topic of coronavirus, the number of calls to psychological support phones is simply off the scale. So over time, there will be less skepticism – if only because turning to professional help will become more common.
Skepticism has arisen due to the emergence of a whole host of false theories in this area. I think Freud and his followers can be called a leader. All these “Oedipus complex”, “collective unconscious”, “psychosexual stages of development”, dream interpretation, etc. introduced many unscientific concepts, blurred the boundaries between psychology and esotericism. And the average person's idea of psychology will be mixed up with them.
Accordingly, psychotherapy based on these theories, which are not based on a scientific basis, is ineffective and can be harmful. Repressed memories, as shown by psychologist Loftus, can be completely false.
Such psychotherapy, as a rule, is not aimed at correcting symptoms, is not connected in any way with the symptom by its own method, but sets amorphous, its own goals – “awareness”, etc. this is similar to the method of a fortune teller who first finds damage and then heals damage. As a rule, many such theories pay great attention to early childhood and wrongly exaggerate its role. Some false psychological theories go even further – before the birth of a person, which is completely stupid and insane.
Such an abundance of pseudoscience, esotericism and shamanism in psychology makes an ordinary person shy away from it.
The so-called personal growth trainings, which are more like destructive sects, have done great damage to the image of psychology.
Unsurprisingly, an outsider will be skeptical at best.
All these freaks from psychology and psychotherapy have flooded the information space, they are trying to get into all areas: from raising children, recruiting staff to treating mental disorders…
Not everyone knows that psychology is a science, not a chatterbox. Few people have heard that the psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, showing how people make choices in the face of unclear risks, how their decisions are influenced by psychological distortions, misconceptions, etc.
And in psychotherapy, the standard of evidence and effectiveness is cognitive behavioral.
Be careful, friends, do not hesitate.