Therapy and counselling are gaining in popularity
and can be very helpful to many people –
but there are growing concerns about some therapy methods and the devastating effects they can
have on individuals and families.
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01 – Please take time to read about the
serious concerns regarding some of
the methods used in therapy.
02 – Please look at the material produced by
the many organisations working to
support victims of bad therapy.
03 – Please talk about this to family and friends.
This is a very serious issue that everyone
needs to be very careful about.
04 – Please contact your MP to tell them of your concerns and urge them to support changes in
the rules on therapy.
Suggested comments …..
– all therapists should be properly regulated and regularly assessed
– there must be more awareness of the problem of ‘false memories’
– coercive control by any therapist should become a criminal offence
(https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP)
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People who have suffered harm should be listened to very seriously and they are entitled to justice – but there are many examples where recovered memories have been shown to be false and have gone on to cause immense and lasting damage.
Most of us do not realise that psychotherapists, therapists
and counsellors are not regulated in the UK.
There is also no regular training for any of these people
to understand the phenomenon of false memory.
Psychotherapists, therapists and counsellors
who subscribe to the idea of repressed memories will
accept without question anything their client says
even if it has never been mentioned before.
Anyone can be targeted by an accusation which may actually be based on a false memory. The accusation will always be taken seriously and the consequences can be terrible for
both the client and the person who is falsely accused.
There is an urgent need for counselling and therapy to be properly regulated and for therapists to be accountable for their methods.
There is also great concern about some counsellors and therapists exercising coercive control over a client (‘Sally’s daughter’ is an example of a coercive therapist). At the moment coercive control is only an offence in a domestic situation (a family setting.) There is an urgent need for this to be extended to non-domestic situations.
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