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By zarathustra, on June 29th, 2010
One of the reasons psychotherapy needs to come under the auspices of the Health Professions Council is due to the lack of a single, statutory register. At present a therapist can be registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), or indeed, no professional body at all.
Shockingly, we have learned that a therapist struck off by the BACP was able to stay registered with the UKCP, despite having committed a serious breach of confidentiality.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy: Therapist struck off by BACP, remains registered with UKCP
By oldschoolbaby, on May 14th, 2010
[OSB has asked me to post this. I have yet to actually read the whole thing as currently my real life is running out of control so here it is. Please remember the previous post is about general discussion of banning and moderation. I do have more to say but will say it to OSB - Mental]
Well, it’s been a bit of a journey. Has it been five years ? I’m not sure. Hundreds of thousands of words, I have wondered whether it was even a million ( and all in an extremely laborious one finger fashion ). Strange behaviour for someone like me who, to paraphrase the advert, really, really isn’t a PC. Of course I had an agenda. The advent of blogging passed me by just as the advent of facebook and the like have completely passed me by. I only became aware of blogs when PC Copperfield’s was serialised in the paper ( yes, yes the Daily Mail ). Copperfield railed against the political correctness, risk averse cultures, bureaucracy and miscellaneous stupidities effectively crippling him in his endeavours to carry out his policing duties. The resulting furore, during which he was persecuted by management, resulted in questions being asked in the House of Commons. In true Labour style Copperfield was damned as a fantasist by Tony McNulty, a Junior Minister at the Home Office. Inevitably, what goes around comes around. The expenses scandal revealed the true measure of McNulty. From there I latched on to other police and teaching blogs with a similar message. Lord knows I’ve had my differences with Dr Crippen but even he had a reasonable idea of where the NHS was going wrong. I was hooked and inspired. I didn’t have the time, number of posts in my head nor the technical know how to start my own blog so I latched on to MN
Quite obviously my attempts to align this site with other anti government blogs have been a spectacular failure. I’ve no regrets though. It’s no secret that the national debt has spiralled, possibly out of all control, in the last 5 years. We will never know whether things would have been different if the government had taken heed of the likes of Copperfield, Inspector Gadget, Frank Chalk and Crippen
Continue reading GOODBYE TO ALL THAT
By Mental Nurse, on May 12th, 2010
The recent political happenings have left me feeling upset and depressed enough to actually get round to writing this. As a quick warning this post is a request for comment and discussion on Mental Nurse site moderation. If this topic is of no interest to you feel free to wait until the next edition of TWIM which is certain to be better.
This post was in part inspired by the recent banning of a well known contributor to Mental Nurse, but is not specifically about that. I feel that some discussion on the topic will probably be useful in guiding how we go about dealing with similar issues in the future.
Continue reading Tyranny and Mutation
By zarathustra, on December 15th, 2009
Last week I highlighted the role of Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology at Essex University, in the Derek Gale abuse case.
Samuels is currently claiming (see comments thread) that it’s an “urban myth” that he offered to be his Gale’s supervisor if Gale’s suspension from the Health Professions Council was lifted. If it’s an urban myth, it’s one that has spread to the transcripts of the HPC hearing. (PDF file: see pages 36, 37 and 47)
It turns out Professor Samuels wasn’t the only prominent psychotherapist to leap to Gale’s support when he was up before the HPC for running a deeply abusive therapy cult. Time now to meet Brian Thorne, Emeritus Professor of Counselling at the University of East Anglia.
Oh, by the way, the rest of this post is going to get raunchy. Not only did Thorne speak in Gale’s defence, but he’s also the author of a knee-tremblingly sexy guide on how to get your rocks off by sexually exploiting vulnerable adults. So, adjust your underwear, put on the romantic music and prepare for some heart-racing breach-of-boundaries action.
(Sarcasm aside, I should point out that the following includes material that may be triggering to sexual abuse survivors. Readers with trauma issues may wish to exercise due caution before deciding whether they want to read this.)
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark (2)
By zarathustra, on December 2nd, 2009
DeeDee’s post about misconduct by mental health workers has (rightly) thrown up a lot of strong feelings. Over on Aethelred’s blog, there’s the following commentary:
(And, goodness me, but isn’t it noticeable how disengaged from the debate the MN regulars have been? You can’t move for comments from them when they’re arguing about nursing becoming an all-graduate profession (something that will make slightly less than fuck-all difference to patients), but when it comes to a discussion of what ought to be the single most pressing issue any of them will ever encounter in their entire professional lives – the systematic abuse of the people they are theoretically meant to care for – suddenly there’s all sorts of other things they have to worry about instead. That’s a very revealing set of priorities, I think.)
What’s really struck me is that none of the nurses (and allied professionals) have expressed outrage at what they’ve read. (They have expressed a vague, hand-waving ‘concern’ or ‘disappointment’ instead.) I don’t know if this is because they are familiar with this kind of abuse in their own working lives and so don’t find it shocking, or because the abuse is being described by patients who they are used to dismissing because, you know, they’re mentals…
Have we (presumably meaning myself, Beakie, cellar_door, Mental Nurse etc) been insufficiently condemning of misconduct in mental health services? I hope that we haven’t. Personally, I’ve mostly kept out of the debate on that particular post; not because I don’t believe the accounts described (I do) but because, as someone who wants to see good quality mental health services and who works hard to try to ensure I’m doing a good job, all this is bloody depressing. As a result I find it hard to come up with a response that doesn’t sound defensive. From the comments thread, it looks like cellar_door has remained quiet for fairly similar reasons.
Even so, I’ll try to come up with some thoughts and opinions.
Continue reading How not to be Nurse Ratched
By zarathustra, on November 7th, 2009
This appeared in my e-mail inbox this week.
You’re not fucking nurses. Nurses work with doctors. Psychiatrists are not real doctors. So you’re not real nurses. You’re just trumped up prison guards, in prisons that hold the innocent. You poison peoples’ bodies with toxic drugs against their will. You carry out human rights atrocities every fucking day. How dare you call yourselves nurses. I hope each and every one of you is killed by one of your torture victims. I mean that. Maybe one day you can get a taste of the trauma you cause in peoples’ lives each and every day. Many people could never live the career choice you have made, which is, to hurt people for a living. FUCK YOU. Your site is offensive, your FAQ is offensive, and you people are disgusting.
Okay, which one of you gave Tom Cruise my e-mail address?
I think I’ll use this e-mail as an excuse for some rambling thoughts on the nature of coercion in mental health.
Continue reading A message from the fans
By Mental Nurse, on July 26th, 2009
Jess did an excellent post recently (or a long time ago depending on when I finish this).
What happens to well-meaning professionals?
She says;
“What happens to turn people who went into this profession with the genuine intention of helping people into people who harm their patients egregiously without noticing or caring? I haven’t really figured this out.”
She then develops part of a theory based on goal displacement. Which certainly is partly true. But does not really come close to beginning to answer the question: goal displacement merely sustain the dehumanisation of nurses, the process of turning into a complete sod starts during training.
Continue reading How Nurse Training Turned Me Into A Big Bad Bag of Nasty
By zarathustra, on July 2nd, 2009
(This is a guest post by Howard Martin, the original complainant in the Derek Gale case. His previous guest post, describing the experience of bringing Derek Gale before the Health Professions Council, can be found here.)
Having a female client simulate masturbation with a cushion while also doing so yourself. Pressuring clients to strip naked in front of the therapy “family”. Having clients provide pornographic videos and then pressuring the “family” to watch them en masse. Photographing female clients topless while on holiday with them and also having them pose half naked for so called art therapy. Punching a female client in the stomach during a singing lesson. Repeated, consistent and demeaning verbal abuse. Running a charity to screw more money out of your clients’ employers. Grabbing a male client by the crotch and attempting to kiss him. Attending client parties in nothing but your underpants and a jacket. Impersonating a mentally ill person while out shopping with your clients. Stealing milk from the local supermarket to impress your clients. Making malicious complaints to the police about complainants. Having bank accounts in another person’s name. Recommending a divorce lawyer to clients who turns out to be nothing more than a friend who is a legal secretary. Claiming to be a world renowned psychotherapist at the cutting edge of the profession and describing yourself as “something of a guru in the world of psychotherapy” when you have no qualifications whatsoever.
Welcome to the world of Gale that the HPC hearings barely touched on. For various reasons some allegations were dropped from the original HPC list. Others never appeared due to them requiring the criminal rather than civil burden of proof as they would constitute criminal acts. It is important to have the flavour of these allegations so that there is no doubt as to the sort of behaviour that the self regulation cabal are condoning and protecting with their claims that they are the ones best placed to deal with the likes of Gale.
Continue reading The sham of self-regulation
By zarathustra, on April 25th, 2009
For those of you who were interested in the interview with Thomas Szasz we discussed earlier in the week, part two of his interview is online here. (mp3 file) Also, in a follow-up episode, two psychiatrists with an interest in philosophy and ethics reply to Szasz.
Continue reading Thomas Szasz speaks, psychiatrists reply
By zarathustra, on March 23rd, 2009
This week’s stripy-jumper themed caption competition is jointly won by Cellar Door and In-the-margins, who both scored 9 points. Their respective entries were:
“Emily could always tell she had been through a manic phase because it was the only time she was brave enough to wear the jumpers her nana knitted.”
and
“The therapist [...]
By Mr Ian, on March 20th, 2009
For those who didn’t read my top post (Socrates, 2009) on AMHP, this is another one like that for you to not read.
Those who did read the previous post may recall the extra and unnecessary hoops the not so local medics made me jump through to get my statutory authorised admission for assessment ‘accepted’.
This week brought another opportunity to utilise the Authority. This time – the medics showed me how they can use it to circumvent ethical practice and avoid doing any avoidable work.
Continue reading AMHP – Act Two
By zarathustra, on February 21st, 2009
Here’s a vignette from me, on the subject of eating disorders.
Kate is 15 years old, with a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, currently being treated on an inpatient unit. She has a BMI of 14, which makes her severely underweight. She looks pathetically thin, is growing lanugo hairs, her periods have stopped and her [...]
By torah, on February 13th, 2009
(Guest post by Torah)
Hi, just have a question about the dreaded ‘boundaries’. I have heard that word thrown around so much since using the mental health service. I am curious as to why it is such a big deal in mental health. I am a nurse who works in a medical ward. I [...]
By zarathustra, on January 29th, 2009
Sometimes on a psychiatric ward ward patients have had their cigarettes rationed by the nurses, so they’re only allowed one every hour or so. I’ve come across a few occasions when people have argued whether or not it’s ethical to do this, so I thought I’d do a case study vignette on the subject.
I’ve got my own opinions on this subject, but I think I’ll wait until others have commented on the vignette before adding my thoughts.
Continue reading Case Study Vignettes: Cigarette Rationing
By nephron, on December 28th, 2008
[Guest post from Nephron -MN]
For the past fortnight I have been an inpatient at a very pleasant private hospital for a manic episode. In my state, private hospitals are not legally allowed to take involuntary patients, so I had to come in voluntarily and agree to stay there.
Continue reading “Voluntary” admissions
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