Mental Health : Esther Freud and Bella Freud Support Petition Against State Regulation

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From Art De Rivers NowPublic.com

Link To Petition Supported by Esther and Bella Freud ]

Just lately parts of the UK, with an eye for it , have woken up to the heavy hand of the State and the way it creates regulations that appear to interfere or cause moral sliding rather than positively enhancing NHS service's accountability.

There is a growing sense of the "State is too big for its boots" .. NHS patients are only now able to use a joined up form of complaints system that where appropriate combines the two often interrelated facets of Health and Social Care :

"The new approach is expected to be introduced in April 2009. These pages provide information and advice about DH’s reforms on how complaints should be dealt with". (DOH Source)

Previously two different complaints systems (both created by the current Govt) often sabotaged each other in inexplicable layers and poor co-ordination .

On NowPublic.com the story about therapists (over 2000 of them ) petitioning Gov't to disagree with the attempt to regulate them under the state connected Health Professions Council has been covered .

What was easier to miss for a while perhaps, was another petition of 1136 which can be signed by members of the public .

Its a petition signed by Esther and Bella Freud the daughters of Lucian Freud (artist) and great grand-daughters of Sigmund Freud . Oliver James a lead UK outspoken psychologist who favours person centred and deep approaches has also signed up . Anthomy Gormley artist/creator of Birmingham UK's "Iron Man" statue has signed up too .. :

"To: UK Parliament

Under new government proposals, psychoanalysis and the talking therapies will be regulated by the State under the Health Professions Council. We the undersigned wish to register our protest and disagreement with this initiative. Psychoanalysis is a private conversation, and the proposed regulations threaten to limit the basic human right to freedom of speech. Each individual should have the freedom to choose the therapist they wish to consult, without the State dictating who is legitimate and who is not. 

" Source Petition Online

What has put the cat amongst the therapist pigeons in the UK is the way the State has favoured Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (£173 million roll out over 3 years ) and the way it has selected that for favourable treatment. The State most pointedly did not rely upon private supply sides for its ambitions, instead it has embarked upon a graduate training programme. There are many faults in all of these plans - not least the lack of depth and experience of graduates and the formulaic approaches of CBT so far outlined .

There has been a lack of "Patient Choice" mechanisms in mental health too . The UK State has looked for solutions it can control quickly .

The collision course was inevitable between all parties , therapists , patients , and State and could have only been avoided by more mature State use of piloting provisions , both Private and State supply sides and monitoring them all fairly . The State knows though that there are damaged people in the community which would certainly increase demand and yet this is an opportunity for parts of society to heal and feel . Does the State want that ?

A supply led solution by the UK NHS State preserves the power of the NHS as monopoly supplier but it does not create the all important quality driver of innovation and consumer driven reports of possible areas of good practice in a wider and larger enviroment of supply .

A charity , Depression Alliance has produced a survey which supports therapy choices and urges the NHS Primary Care Trust commisioners to : Recommendation 4 :

"Additionally, depression and anxiety should be added to ‘choose and book’ so that people with these conditions have a right to choose from a range of five accredited providers when referred to specialist treatments in the community. People with chronic depression should be entitled to hold personal health and social care budgets alongside those with less disabling chronic illnesses."

What does seem the case is the State has missed opportunities to bring people together sooner and more respectifully with its years of concentration on the work-is-recovery ethos which has seen it waste probably £140 million on NIMHE and CSIP..

The current £173 million CBT roll out is arguably partly going to waste too because it neither commands the confidence of patients fully, with its one size fits all approach , and it has alienated private supply sides with its insistence on State regulation and the fear of too much control that carries . Patient Choice as from from April 2009 was also barred in mental health (see the story here )

As for the protection of the public under State regulation of all therapies in the UK - the petition carries this :

"The new regulations proposed for the talking therapies - which include 451 rules for the analytic session - would effectively make it impossible to practise psychoanalysis and many other forms of therapy in the way they have been practised for the last hundred years. The Health Professions Council plans a public campaign to discredit those practitioners whose own practice and ethical code would not allow them to sign up to its market-led vision of therapy and normality.



The main reason given for the regulatory project is protection of the public. Yet all analytic and therapy organisations already have stringent codes of ethics and practice, as well as complaints procedures. Replacing these with an inherently unsuited model of healthcare will destroy the growth and vitality of the field for both therapists and those who consult them. We urge an alternative model, like that adopted in other countries, where government intervention is limited to the requirement that all therapists join a register which is administered by an independent professional body, giving full details of their training and affiliations. This would enable members of the public to make their own informed choice rather than having politicians make it for them.

" Source Petition Online

What is left in all of this is a lack of joined up brokerage for pained people who could benefit from the use of all supply sides whilst balancing the demand side from patients more respectfully with equality of opportunity embedded , to choose treatments that can evolve to suit different types of human emotional problems

ADR