It all depends on the therapist/psychiatrist/shrink/counselor he goes to, I think. Unless it's something like anger management, but even then...my sister is in therapy for depression and she sees a counselor once a week for an hour. The woman has a PhD and is pretty nice, all she does is listen to my sister and make suggestions from time to time. Binary needs to find a shrink-person-dude that he's comfortable with who will not attempt to medicate him immediately. My sister was seeing her counselor for about 6 months before she started medication, which has actually worked out pretty well....but then again, I'm only speaking from one example.
I personally don't like the whole counselor psychiatrist deal, mostly because I'm highly secretive and I'm uncomfortable revealing myself to more then one person at such a deep level. I'm sorry you had such a bad experience (or more? I don't know), it's frustrating when whoever it is you're seeing takes things you say as "abnormal" or whatnot, tries to figure out what's wrong with you (if something IS wrong), and then gives you medication for said abnormality, when all you need is someone to talk to.