All we have are stories – if we’ve been through therapy there are often many reasons why a story of help or hindrance is told and most of these reasons will be out of our awareness, how we slept, what we’ve eaten and when, are we hydrated, in the moment perceptions of the person asking the questions, and the various hormones and electrical chaos moving within and around us and myriad other influences beyond what Smail referred to as our ‘awareness horizon’
It would be handy to estimate how much money has gone into this ‘research’ or ghost hunting nonsense and how many millions of people have been duped into accepting this marketing ploy as a real disorder. Informed Consent simply does not exist in the mental ill health industry.
The PHQ9 has got to be one of the most dangerous tick box questionnaires ever deployed – it inflates several fold the likelihood you will be labelled ‘depressed’ or ‘GAD’ – not surprising considering it was the brain child of a marketing man called Howard Kroplick employed by Pfizer. Tasked with the job of expanding drug prescribing by creating something primary care GP’s could administer in a brief entirely insufficient consultation. The idea was then taken up by Spitzer based on his ‘criteria’ for ‘depression’. When asked by James Davies in his book cracked why this many ‘symptoms’ and not say more or less – Spitzer replied stating that more more just seemed like too many and less too few – ZERO science and has led to millions of people being prescribed with ZERO informed consent drugs marketed as ‘antidepressants’ they no longer need, benefit from and are often harmed by.
The term ‘antidepressant’ was minted once drug companies realised they had a market for their new drug if only they could expand this market via well funded campaigns like defeat depression etc. The regulator granted the use of the term after just two crap studies showing a non statistically significant reduction on another tick box the Ham D.
Diagnosis or the identification of any presumed difference doesn’t exist in psychiatry. It’s all misdiagnosis based on ever broadening and loosening ‘criteria’ for some subjective opinion of ‘on the spectrum’ out of control harmful medicalisation is everywhere.
Yes a truly draw dropping book exposing massive abuses of power and ultimate hubris. His other book the assault on truth is also a must read. Where are the exposures of all the modern schools? William m epstein’s books on psychotherapy are excellent at demonstrating the poor quality of the research and points to harms.
Pretty disgraceful that after over 100 years of psychotherapy the field doesnāt seem to bother itself with the harms its doing to people. Anyone working in the field who takes the care to ask about former therapy from their clients will hear a range of negative impacts and Iāve had my own personal negative experiences in therapy.
Therapists are in positions of perceived cultural power and sanctioned by the state. The general public, generally put us on a pedestal and believe the hype of āevidence basedā etc. This means whatever we say can influence people positively or negatively we cannot know which.
Consider therapy is mostly done on the therapists terms, in some office at a certain time/day. One is perceived as client the other professional, one discloses painful parts the other next to nothing, one is exposed the other protected.
Weāre all speaking from whatever complex interactions are going on for us in this moment along with being tied to an equally complex history. We have little access to some personal truth of things but come with our own biases, heuristics, and resources, often very limited.
Most therapists havenāt a clue what life is actually like for the person sitting in front of them, so weāre operating in near total ignorance of the person devoid of living context.
What could do wrong? a little self esteem raising or āassertiveness trainingā maybe leads to being beaten up by a violent partner, or fill in a never ending blank of potential harms that most therapists and clients are oblivious to until the influences influence a life in random and unknowable ways.
Just consider the drop out rate in state ran services such as Talking Therapies, formally IAPT, its massive!
Yet no one bothers to follow these people up, no one seems to care and their place is immediately filled with another person on a sort of conveyor belt of suffering where success is measured by utter nonsense like a score on the PHQ9.
just astonishing and terrifying that this continues to happen, its surely criminal?
Neoliberalism takes our worst human parts and explodes them into giant profit and status seeking monsters, feeding on other people at every opportunity.
I’d love to see Ioannidis do a similar review on clinical psychology and psychotherapy research since the replication crisis came to light. The research base for clin psy and psychotherapy is also complete garbage, riddled various with biaes, small samples, attrition, mixed measures, subjectivity, misrepresentation of the data and an inability to actual discern or agree on what they are actually ‘treating’ or design a placebo and on and on.
its astonishing how little interest there is in the harms caused by psychotherapy and how many therapists appear blissfully unaware that therapy can and does harm people.
It is also remarkable that psychotherapy persists given the dire state of the research base – try William M Epstein’s three key books – The illusion of Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy as religion and Psychotherapy and the social clinic in the united states, soothing fictions to be left i no doubt how terrible the research actually is.
All we have are stories – if we’ve been through therapy there are often many reasons why a story of help or hindrance is told and most of these reasons will be out of our awareness, how we slept, what we’ve eaten and when, are we hydrated, in the moment perceptions of the person asking the questions, and the various hormones and electrical chaos moving within and around us and myriad other influences beyond what Smail referred to as our ‘awareness horizon’
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It would be handy to estimate how much money has gone into this ‘research’ or ghost hunting nonsense and how many millions of people have been duped into accepting this marketing ploy as a real disorder. Informed Consent simply does not exist in the mental ill health industry.
Report comment
The PHQ9 has got to be one of the most dangerous tick box questionnaires ever deployed – it inflates several fold the likelihood you will be labelled ‘depressed’ or ‘GAD’ – not surprising considering it was the brain child of a marketing man called Howard Kroplick employed by Pfizer. Tasked with the job of expanding drug prescribing by creating something primary care GP’s could administer in a brief entirely insufficient consultation. The idea was then taken up by Spitzer based on his ‘criteria’ for ‘depression’. When asked by James Davies in his book cracked why this many ‘symptoms’ and not say more or less – Spitzer replied stating that more more just seemed like too many and less too few – ZERO science and has led to millions of people being prescribed with ZERO informed consent drugs marketed as ‘antidepressants’ they no longer need, benefit from and are often harmed by.
The term ‘antidepressant’ was minted once drug companies realised they had a market for their new drug if only they could expand this market via well funded campaigns like defeat depression etc. The regulator granted the use of the term after just two crap studies showing a non statistically significant reduction on another tick box the Ham D.
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Shockingly sick system and so many well intentioned but often incredibly ignorant people working in it.
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Diagnosis or the identification of any presumed difference doesn’t exist in psychiatry. It’s all misdiagnosis based on ever broadening and loosening ‘criteria’ for some subjective opinion of ‘on the spectrum’ out of control harmful medicalisation is everywhere.
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Thank you
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Yes a truly draw dropping book exposing massive abuses of power and ultimate hubris. His other book the assault on truth is also a must read. Where are the exposures of all the modern schools? William m epstein’s books on psychotherapy are excellent at demonstrating the poor quality of the research and points to harms.
Report comment
Pretty disgraceful that after over 100 years of psychotherapy the field doesnāt seem to bother itself with the harms its doing to people. Anyone working in the field who takes the care to ask about former therapy from their clients will hear a range of negative impacts and Iāve had my own personal negative experiences in therapy.
Therapists are in positions of perceived cultural power and sanctioned by the state. The general public, generally put us on a pedestal and believe the hype of āevidence basedā etc. This means whatever we say can influence people positively or negatively we cannot know which.
Consider therapy is mostly done on the therapists terms, in some office at a certain time/day. One is perceived as client the other professional, one discloses painful parts the other next to nothing, one is exposed the other protected.
Weāre all speaking from whatever complex interactions are going on for us in this moment along with being tied to an equally complex history. We have little access to some personal truth of things but come with our own biases, heuristics, and resources, often very limited.
Most therapists havenāt a clue what life is actually like for the person sitting in front of them, so weāre operating in near total ignorance of the person devoid of living context.
What could do wrong? a little self esteem raising or āassertiveness trainingā maybe leads to being beaten up by a violent partner, or fill in a never ending blank of potential harms that most therapists and clients are oblivious to until the influences influence a life in random and unknowable ways.
Just consider the drop out rate in state ran services such as Talking Therapies, formally IAPT, its massive!
Yet no one bothers to follow these people up, no one seems to care and their place is immediately filled with another person on a sort of conveyor belt of suffering where success is measured by utter nonsense like a score on the PHQ9.
Report comment
just astonishing and terrifying that this continues to happen, its surely criminal?
Neoliberalism takes our worst human parts and explodes them into giant profit and status seeking monsters, feeding on other people at every opportunity.
I’d love to see Ioannidis do a similar review on clinical psychology and psychotherapy research since the replication crisis came to light. The research base for clin psy and psychotherapy is also complete garbage, riddled various with biaes, small samples, attrition, mixed measures, subjectivity, misrepresentation of the data and an inability to actual discern or agree on what they are actually ‘treating’ or design a placebo and on and on.
Report comment
its astonishing how little interest there is in the harms caused by psychotherapy and how many therapists appear blissfully unaware that therapy can and does harm people.
It is also remarkable that psychotherapy persists given the dire state of the research base – try William M Epstein’s three key books – The illusion of Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy as religion and Psychotherapy and the social clinic in the united states, soothing fictions to be left i no doubt how terrible the research actually is.
Report comment