We can't leave mentally ill people at the mercy of unregulated therapists | Patrick Strudwick MPs must vote on Friday to remedy the fact that patients are exposed to untrained, unethical mental health professionals.
Revisit, just for a moment, a time when a doctor was looking after you. How do you feel? Vulnerable? Scared? Reassured? For all the recent scandals about NHS failings, as patients we at least know that the person treating us is trained and qualified, has a certain amount of experience and is registered with the General Medical Council. We know that thanks to this regulatory body, underpinned by statute, our doctor is subject to a code of conduct and, if misconduct occurs, can be held to account, and in extreme cases struck off, never again allowed near a patient.
Revisit too, if you will, a time when you or a loved one needed help for a mental health problem, and consider this: the therapist or counsellor looking after you can do so without any training, any qualifications, any experience, any membership of a professional body, or ever having signed up to a code of conduct. If they abuse their position – perhaps by making sexual advances to you – perhaps by planting false memories, or any number of other malpractices more common than we will ever know, they do so with absolute impunity.
Neither "psychotherapist" nor "counsellor" are protected titles in Britain. Thus I could set up a website today, call myself a therapist, offer my services for £60 an hour and do or say whatever I want to my clients – as long as it doesn't break the law – and there is nothing anyone could do about it. I could even be hired by the NHS, and be paid with taxpayers' money. Someone violent and recently out of prison, someone on the sex offenders' register could become a therapist. And they could be helping you with panic attacks, or depression, or post-traumatic stress from childhood sexual abuse.
So what sort of country doesn't have a basic requirement for those working with the mentally unwell?
Currently, there are only private, independent bodies for counsellors and psychotherapists. They decide, behind closed doors, whether their members have contravened their own code of conduct. And if membership is revoked, the therapist can join another organisation.
I know this because I took psychotherapist Lesley Pilkington to a conduct hearing at the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy after she attempted, while I was working undercover for a newspaper, to use therapy and prayer to make me heterosexual. It took two years for the BACP to withdraw her membership and she simply registered with the Association of Christian Counsellors and carried on practising.
Hers is far from an isolated case. But it was this case that prompted Labour MP Geraint Davies to contact me, aghast at the inadequacies of our system. Together we drafted a bill – the counsellors and psychotherapists (regulation) bill, which reaches its second reading in the Commons on 28 February, and which will deliver universal standards and meaningful accountability. Struck off will mean struck off.
Under Gordon Brown, Labour had planned to regulate counsellors and therapists, but the coalition shelved this and introduced instead a voluntary register – no teeth, no protection for the vulnerable.
To illustrate the near laughable inconsistencies between regulation for physical and mental health resulting from such inaction, one need only glance at someone dispensing a hearing aid. They are regulated by the Health and Care Professionals Council (who will regulate counsellors and therapists if this bill succeeds). But someone tending to the suicidal is not. Suicide kills more young men than any physical illness.
If the government votes against this bill on Friday, as they have suggested they will, they will be failing every Briton – not only the one in four of us who will suffer mental ill health but everyone affected by it. They will leave you, your child, your partner, or anyone reaching out, vulnerable, scared, to quell their distress, at the mercy of the untrained, the unqualified and the unethical. This is not simply a scandal; it is an emergency. The Guardian
Revisit, just for a moment, a time when a doctor was looking after you. How do you feel? Vulnerable? Scared? Reassured? For all the recent scandals about NHS failings, as patients we at least know that the person treating us is trained and qualified, has a certain amount of experience and is registered with the General Medical Council. We know that thanks to this regulatory body, underpinned by statute, our doctor is subject to a code of conduct and, if misconduct occurs, can be held to account, and in extreme cases struck off, never again allowed near a patient.
Revisit too, if you will, a time when you or a loved one needed help for a mental health problem, and consider this: the therapist or counsellor looking after you can do so without any training, any qualifications, any experience, any membership of a professional body, or ever having signed up to a code of conduct. If they abuse their position – perhaps by making sexual advances to you – perhaps by planting false memories, or any number of other malpractices more common than we will ever know, they do so with absolute impunity.
Neither "psychotherapist" nor "counsellor" are protected titles in Britain. Thus I could set up a website today, call myself a therapist, offer my services for £60 an hour and do or say whatever I want to my clients – as long as it doesn't break the law – and there is nothing anyone could do about it. I could even be hired by the NHS, and be paid with taxpayers' money. Someone violent and recently out of prison, someone on the sex offenders' register could become a therapist. And they could be helping you with panic attacks, or depression, or post-traumatic stress from childhood sexual abuse.
So what sort of country doesn't have a basic requirement for those working with the mentally unwell?
Currently, there are only private, independent bodies for counsellors and psychotherapists. They decide, behind closed doors, whether their members have contravened their own code of conduct. And if membership is revoked, the therapist can join another organisation.
I know this because I took psychotherapist Lesley Pilkington to a conduct hearing at the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy after she attempted, while I was working undercover for a newspaper, to use therapy and prayer to make me heterosexual. It took two years for the BACP to withdraw her membership and she simply registered with the Association of Christian Counsellors and carried on practising.
Hers is far from an isolated case. But it was this case that prompted Labour MP Geraint Davies to contact me, aghast at the inadequacies of our system. Together we drafted a bill – the counsellors and psychotherapists (regulation) bill, which reaches its second reading in the Commons on 28 February, and which will deliver universal standards and meaningful accountability. Struck off will mean struck off.
Under Gordon Brown, Labour had planned to regulate counsellors and therapists, but the coalition shelved this and introduced instead a voluntary register – no teeth, no protection for the vulnerable.
To illustrate the near laughable inconsistencies between regulation for physical and mental health resulting from such inaction, one need only glance at someone dispensing a hearing aid. They are regulated by the Health and Care Professionals Council (who will regulate counsellors and therapists if this bill succeeds). But someone tending to the suicidal is not. Suicide kills more young men than any physical illness.
If the government votes against this bill on Friday, as they have suggested they will, they will be failing every Briton – not only the one in four of us who will suffer mental ill health but everyone affected by it. They will leave you, your child, your partner, or anyone reaching out, vulnerable, scared, to quell their distress, at the mercy of the untrained, the unqualified and the unethical. This is not simply a scandal; it is an emergency. The Guardian
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