- Darian Leader calls for a waaaahmbulance
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – why it matters
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – Who’s Against it
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – More from its opponents
- Psychotherapy self regulation – a licence to carry on abusing?
- Psychologists join the HPC register
- The sham of self-regulation
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – A Psychotherapist Responds (1)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – A Psychotherapist Responds (2)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – Response to Zarathustra
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – Another Arts Therapist struck off
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: The Maresfield Report (1)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Maresfield Report (2)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Something rotten in the state of Denmark?
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark (2)
- Professor Andrew Samuels caught lying about his role in abuse case
- An Open letter to the UKCP
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: UKCP document leaked to Mental Nurse
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: More on the leaked UKCP document
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: More leaks from the UKCP
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Samuels’ Damascene Conversion
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Therapist struck off by BACP, remains registered with UKCP
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: HPC calls UKCP critique “gobbledegook”
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: 85% of service users want statutory regulation
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Acclaimed Journalist Calls for Psychotherapy Regulation
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Charity Commission urges UKCP to seek legal advice
A while back I posted a retort to a Guardian article by Darian Leader opposing the state regulation of psychotherapists. Leader’s argument could be summed up as, “Waaaah! Waaaah! The government wants to regulate us! In the way that mere mortals like doctors, nurses and social workers get regulated! We might wind up actually answerable for our actions to somebody other than ourselves! Waaaah!”
So, I wasn’t all that sympathetic.
I’ve had an e-mail in response to that post from Mind, They enclose a press release:
Mind and WITNESS respond to ruling on Derek Gale case
The Health Care Professionals Council has today struck off Arts Therapist Derek Gale following wide ranging incidents of misconduct and abuse towards patients in his care. However, Gale has only been banned from practicing as an arts therapist, and under current legislation, can continue to practice as a psychotherapist or counsellor. Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind, supported by Jonathan Coe, Chief Executive of WITNESS, said:
“Therapy can be an extremely sensitive process involving people at their most vulnerable, and requires patients to have absolute trust in their therapist while most therapists treat their patients with respect, sadly some cross the line between what is acceptable and appropriate and what is not.
“At the moment, anyone can call themselves a psychotherapist or counsellor and begin treating patients without any formal training, or sticking to any code of conduct whatsoever. Even when a therapist is struck off the register for one therapy, there is nothing to stop them from applying to practice under a different register, or practicing under no register at all.“Derek Gale has been legally banned from practicing as an arts therapist after years of abuse towards vulnerable patients in his care, yet under current rules, there is nothing to stop him from continuing practicing as a counsellor or psychotherapist.
“The government has announced that it plans to bring psychotherapists and counsellors under state regulation, making it mandatory for these practitioners to be on one main register. We urge the government to forge ahead with these plans in order to give patients the protection that they deserve.”
For those who are interested, the ruling against Derek Gale can be found here. It includes incidents of inappropriate touching of patients, breaches of confidentiality, failure to keep proper records, swearing at patients, inappropriate social and business relationships with patients, and smoking cannabis in front of patients.
Derek Gale’s website is still up here, where he continues to advertise his services for psychotherapy and counselling, though not art therapy. If want, you can pay £65 an hour to be “treated” by this prick.
I’m entirely in agreement with Mind’s stance on this issue. When it comes to regulating psychological therapies we should listen to the victims of people like Derek Gale and not to self-righteous whingers like Darian Leader.
Wow, that’s some pretty serious malpractice.
Considering that therapists are less likely to be working as part of a team when you filter in the number of them in private practice then the case for regulation looks pretty strong. Therapy that isn’t carried out properly can be so damaging.
I find it pretty galling that he has an article on his website about boundaries.
I think it’s extremely important that psychotherapists of all flavours are regulated, and closely.
When you decide to go and “get therapy”, unlike a dentist, getting recommendations from friends can be a bit tricky. So, it can be a bit of a crap shoot – some GPs will recommend therapy practices, but some won’t, and so on.
Who you end up with then, the very first time round, can be pretty random.
And there are very many idiots out there giving therapy who should not be found anywhere next or near the activity. These range from God botherers of all types to new age twits who have pet theories about everything and no time for boring, conventional, western crap like “science” and “medical trials” and all those other things Ben Goldacre bangs on about, to people who have significant issues of their own and are in fact projecting them on to _you_ in therapy, to out and out shysters like the bloke described above.
The difficulty is that, unlike, say, a personal trainer, as a potential client you will typically have very low self-esteem, and will tend to feel that deciding the therapist is not for you is somehow your fault and you need to “try harder”. This makes extricating oneself when you find out the therapist is a waste of space – or just not for you – extremely difficult psychologically.
Right now, I’m seeing an excellent therapist, but I was able to get recommendations from friends, and I have a thick enough hide to spot an idiot at 50 paces after 20 years of mentalism.
When I first started looking for some sort of therapy though, about 15 years ago, I got through 6 individuals before I found a good one. The first two were fine but didn’t do the sort of therapy I was looking for, ie CBT based stuff, the next one thought taking medication was like taking heroin and I had a “dependency” on my meds and kept harping on about it, the next was a complete money-grubbing prick, and number 6 was sensible, level-headed, focussed on what I needed to work on and how. I saw her for 1 year and that did the trick at the time.
I also had to pay for an initial appointment each time, something I was able to do due to being on a rather generous student bursary from the European Commission, but not everyone is in that position. So finding a decent therapist is costly as well.
Each time I changed, other than the first 2 who frankly told me they weren’t much good to me, it was psychologically wrenching. I had far, far more guilt complexes and self-hating thought patterns then than now, and I cried for several days each time.
Especially when one of the useless ones had a go and said it was my fault I wasn’t getting on with him – I objected to him always asking for the money upfront each session, and saying that if I had booked a particular weekly time slot, I would have to pay for any weeks I missed even if I gave months of advance notice, to compensate him as he couldn’t slot someone else in, or stop therapy completely from that point.
The final straw was when he said that I needed to do the “exit interview” in 2 parts, presumably so he could scrounge another 30 quid out of me. I told him I wasn’t going to do that. But I cried for 3 days because I blamed myself. Oh, and he insisted that if I showed up early, I stand outside in the rain, but threw a fit if I was 1 minute late.
I am much less vulnerable now. But there are tons of old-mes out there vulnerable to this type of exploitation and just getting subjected to the random crap of idiots who don’t know how to run a small business.
He sits with his psychotherapist
and thinks, “What am I doing here?”
His social anxieties persist
while his savings slowly disappear.
A little doggerel I wrote a while ago. If it stops abusers like Gale, then by all means regulate the bastards.
This exemplifies why mental/health care should be regulated. Those who believe that people who are desperate and in mental/physical pain, and who are likely to ‘clutch at straws’, can make rational judgements about health providers, are just wrong.
Dee Dee, while I acknowledge what you are saying, for the majority of people the potential power inbalance between healthcare providers and service users is vast.
This imbalance is why we have “patient advocates” and regulations. While the sentiment is nice, the action tends not to be all there. However, in my mind, ideal mental health care would be such that patient advocates and regulations would be redundant. This is clearly not the case, and even if it were, to remove redundancies like regulations or patient advocates would leave the system too open to abuse. I think that some good quality goals would be for the professionals to advocate for their patients so much themselves that the patient advocates and the regulation boards are bored, just have to twiddle their thumbs all day. That would be beautiful, but I’m not holding my breath for it.
As of April this year, The MHA in the UK gives statutory access to independent advocates although most NHS trusts were pro-active in ensuring patients who required advocacy were assisted in accessing that service.
But this does not assist in ensuring that professionals are suitably qualified or indeed that regulations determine that they should have a relevant qualification.
Advocates are good at advocacy but most likely do not have enough knowledge to assess the appropriateness (is that a word?) or quality of professionals.
It is often difficult for nurses or other professionals to advocate for patients
particularly if the patient disagrees with diagnosis/treatment/discharge etc.
Regulation?
Shooting more like.
I agree with Socrates.
Having had psychodynamic psychotherapy last year from a clinical psychologist in a mental health trust, I recently obtained access to the initial assessment report and the final summary of treatment as well as a letter to my GP, which was written at the same time.
The assessment was made by in April 2007 by an SpR, who saw me twice and did not take notes during the sessions. The extremely complex family and personal history I tried to explain to him in exactly 100 minutes was inaccurately summarised in his report, which contained many factual errors and left out essential details. Nobody, not even a psychologist, is clever enough to summarise any long and complex story accurately after listening to it once, without taking notes.
The therapy itself started in December 2007, by another therapist, supervised by the SpR and based on the factual errors in his original assessment, which I was not allowed to see or challenge, so the therapy was based on false premises from the start.
In his final report the therapist described his “experience of being with the patient”:
He found the therapy “challenging” and often felt “pinned down” but after a time his anxiety reduced. He found it much more comfortable after I stopped going on about my past (which he didn’t think was appropriate) and showed more respect and engagement with him and the therapy, which he felt showed some “improvement in mood and behaviour”.
This guy and his supervisor are already registered. I have since had a verbal apology from their head of department after going through both these reports with her. She has also agreed to correct all the facts, which would otherwise remain on record, probably because I told her the original documents were about to be sent to my lawyer. I didn’t mention I was intending to publish them too. I wonder how they’ll react when they find out.
I don’t think GPs are aware of how unregulated it is, either. Well, that’s my charitable interpretation. I’ve had quite a few suggest “counselling”, not seeming to know that that could mean anything.
Psychotherapy – most of it anyway – is the West’s “traditional healing”, and about as useful.
E-mails between Lord Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness, and our old friend the unqualified psychologist Derek Draper, discussing the PMs mental health have been leaked the day after Gordon Brown promoted Mandy to “First Secretary” (otherwise known as Deputy Prime Minister).
Is Mandy prepared to give up his peerage, I wonder, in time to save New Labour?