Sunday, June 28, 2009

Therapy Wars : CBT Parrot Squad Partially Slips Off Its Stand

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By UserWatch And The "Rivers Clan"

Its probably best to just show the article showing UK research that shows up CBT to be very lightweight therapy. Ineffective for psychoses, and pretty much dubious for depressions

We are not surprised its falling off its perch since the planners and influencers over Labour took over from where Patient Choice may have guided far better . Some of the influencers were upper class circles of professors down south connected to MH charities and in the London areas and for sure they have a right to their view .

Patient's in mental health though have a human right to choice of therapy without it being imposed on them by undemocratic elites that Labour happen to know and have trusted ..

"Trust me I am a patient" John Reid's line from a July 2003 keynote speech was largely an abdicated position in mental health .. We think it still is . The choice mechanism is barely existent in MH .

The State cannot drive quality of therapies that recover people - Patients have to do that without the crushing monopoly of the NHS always in the way .. The NHS should be one area of choice and that is all .. It should stop being an idealised position furnishing more bureacarcy , more centralism and more State ..


CreditFor the Article Below Goes To PSYORG.COM


Evidence That Cognitive Therapy Is Of No Value In Schitzophrenia

June 26th, 2009

"News-Research co-led by an academic at the University of Hertfordshire, concludes that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is of no value in schizophrenia and has limited effect on depression. Professor Keith Laws, at the University's School of Psychology, is one of the lead authors on a paper entitled: Cognitive behavioural therapy for major psychiatric disorder: does it really work? A meta-analytical review of well-controlled trials, which has just been published online in the journal Psychological Medicine. The paper reviews the use of CBT in , bipolar disorder and .

The results of the review suggest that not only is CBT ineffective in treating schizophrenia and in preventing relapse, it is also ineffective in preventing relapses in bipolar disorder.

The review also suggests that CBT has only a weak effect in treating depression, but it has a greater effect in preventing relapses in this disorder.

The authors focused particularly on methodologically rigorous trials that compared CBT to a ‘psychological placebo' and also investigated the impact of ‘blinding', i.e. whether or not the people who assessed the patients knew if they were receiving active treatment or not. Both factors are considered essential before a drug treatment is approved for use in .

The authors noted that not a single trial employing both blinding and psychological has found CBT to be effective in schizophrenia and surprisingly few well-controlled studies of CBT in depression.

"The results of this review are important because in March NICE re-approved CBT for use in all people with schizophrenia. The Government is also investing millions of pounds to provide CBT for depression and in 250 dedicated therapy centres across England," said Professor Laws. "Yet the evidence here is that the effectiveness of this form of therapy may be less than previously thought, to the point of being non-existent in schizophrenia."

The other authors of the paper are Professor Peter McKenna, Benito Menni Complex Assistencial en Salut Mental, Barcelona and Dr Damian Lynch, University of Glasgow.

More information: Cognitive behavioural therapy for major psychiatric disorder: does it really work? A meta-analytical review of well-controlled trials, Psychological Medicine, Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/S003329170900590X

Source: University of Hertfordshire (news : web)


Friday, June 26, 2009

Norma Jean Holds Out Her Orphan Arms For Michael

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There is no doubt in my mind at all that "magical" people are often constructed by tragedy . I often write as a poet-artist that "Magic and Tragic" are two sides of a law and coin - that rule, purchase, and imply each other .

Magical people have internal childlike worlds powered by unmet needs for love from this parent or that parent or whatever parent was supposed to be the place of proper nurture and they sometimes have the transforming power of imagination to become exotically adaptive. Its a defensive self rescue in them that burns as it develops .
They are sometimes even perverse . Pushed to perform . Pushed to finally try to compensate for a part of themselves that is locked in an unending internal struggle for a perfect unity with a parent that never really felt or saw them properly .
They are incomplete, made by a combined depth of little empathic recognition and pain and they spiral into a Self of show and special trajectories of what passes for authentic recognition of themselves.
Human comets : Norma Jean , Judy Garland , John Lennon , Michael Jackson . We know them. They come and pass amongst us ... Orbits of pain and wonder .
As a poet-artist I am content to envision that the spirit of Michael Jackson and his woes should meet Norma Jean and share stories about being orphaned and empty .
That somewhere over the painbow, a realm of wisdom lies that allows their light blue shadows to weep what they never could as children .... I'll be with them in my heart .

And if such a special realm never exists outside of all of us, then maybe we can have a little compassion for everyone who is flawed . Maybe we can invent an empathic reception too of pain and recognition and sit by Norma Jean and Michael Jackson inside ourselves and recognise some of their reflections, in us ..
We can create a place of redemption . You see, we are all actually magical .

Michael :

Everyone dances by the river Styx

With flaws and with the crutches

Of the

Crucifix...

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

A Public Dogology To Lord Brett Best CBT Practitioner In The UK

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USERWATCH SENDS IN DEG THE DOG TO DOGOLOGISE

After The Guardian spatt on a Welfare Reform article

By Jonathon Ruthford

with Brett the Best

This dogology above was called for .

By the Way - CBT :

Cheek Behavioural Therapy is available

At USERWATCH ROOMS

(Look what we do for that Silvis Rivers ...)

Wicked exchanges below noted from the Guardian .

LORD BRETT :

Good article, good thread and I fully agree with 99% of posters, however,

Silvisrivers@

"neck bolting cogbottery of CBT"

As a CBT therapist myself, I`d be interested in a more informed discussion as to your seeming distaste of this approach, rather than the concern I assume you have (which I share with many) that it (like anything else) be abused for dubious political ends. Put simply, Is it the therapy you dislike or how it can be abused


SILVIS RIVERS :


Lord Brett

Silvis Rivers ! Your 1% per cent disagreement figure here !

There's a sketch of a mental health User colleague - Yep - a neck bolted cogbottery success story

SEE HERE : So seee I have an evidence base Lord Brett

However , Welfare and Reform, and CBT supply eh ? .. Oh yes, many do know they are all woven policies

The supply sides of therapy up and down the country available through PCT's , Trusts and GP surgeries are coming on stream with the £173 million of Govt funding over several years.

The Govt took it upon themselves to push CBT – it was endorsed of course as part of the welfare to work reforms by Dick Layard (LSE) to get people back to work and some very simplistic things were claimed of it like 10 – 12 sessions would see many thousands go back to work as CBT successes.

I believe this approach was flawed at many levels both therapeutic and at the recognition of individualised need for therapy help and personal pace. Personalised services were the kinds of things we were promised which have been overtaken by large planning and system delivery gurus ..

There was plenty of supply sides (unharnessed) for therapies already in the private sector and if MH patients had had a patient choice culture through say local purchasing (GP level) then slowly a culture of decent therapies would have taken root and the useless practitioners would have been weeded out by patient satisfaction being measured at a local level ..

There's no competition with the State so the State cannot claim a Patient Choice culture and in mental health as I say we were promised Patient Choice and better personalised budgets for recovery and we've seen bagger all that cuts the mustard, and now we are getting welfare deformed-reform oppression

The Mild to Moderate depressive category of those out of work who were going to be the first candidates of CBT is another example the strange language of system driven welfare reform bureacracy . People with depression present differently with different reasons for being depressed and many (excluding Bipolar) have years of compressed misery and likely or not special events they need to emotionally alleiviate and resolve ..

CBT as its promoted is simplistic and its going to be played with by graduate-workers employed by the NHS… That is wrong …

After 36 years of seeing mental health suffering of all varieties I can honestly say I think that's a mistake and there are plenty of skilled practitioners out their in the market place where Patient's could get a real choice to find ways to resolve their pain , depression and misery .. The money was there in 2004 but the Govt saw fit to create NIMHE (now defunct) which went on to spend in excess of £100 million. I see that as a major loss of treatment opportunity for people who needed therapy choices years ago .. The market was left untapped and even alienated by the insistence it come under Govt control through the Health Professions Council despite bodies like UKCP and BACP and others having adequate ethical comittees and complaint processes.

CBT is not Patient Choice - its being used for State dominion - Neither in my opinion is it a depth approach to resolve difficult emotional pains and states by actually feeling them towards resolution and integration, which is an emotionally realistic way to deal with most of the human condition.

Its a lightweight application with limited scope and I think many MH patients and people in the community will be shortchanged by it - if its allied to deeper emotional approaches and acceptances of peoples feelings, and feeling states towards resolution, then maybe it will become useful because then it creates a place for recognition of feelings - proportionality of reaction, and past and present and how one can serve to whip up reactions in the other .

I do hope you like my evidence base ..

Silvis Rivers

USERWATCH & COGBOTTERY EVIDENCE BASE


LORD BRETT :


Silvisrivers

yes I like your `evidence-base`. It made me smile and that is always welcome in my book.

I share your scepticism at the new use of CBT and the almost factory-style production of `fast-track` IAPT practitioners who will be as limited in their ability in all likelihood as their rushed training implies.

However, those of us who trained a while ago and took many years to do it, including starting with a nursing qualification and many years of experience in that field too might feel slightly irritated that because CBT has been co-opted by NuLab, many people including sad to say, your good self view it as lightweight and trivial as the politicians who seem to push its use.

This view of CBT as not addressing `real issues` and a `quick fix` simply reveals a lack of knowledge of the subject and is in a sense, as lightweight, uninformed and thin a dismissal as the behaviour of those you claim to despise.


SILVIS RIVERS :


Lord Brett

Hey if you feel you are adequate fine ... I have not personalised this issue - and your sadness is noted but so is the pain of others in my community of mental health Users that are shortchanged by system top down thinking and would be welfare reform applications

Welfare Reform and the top down way its being planned included CBT jackboots too or maybe they should be called "Dick-boots" after a certain person who is economical with therapy .

Personalisation of services has gone out of the NHS window and welfare reform has become the new psycho-work-alot religion . Even Job Centre staff hover in and and around NHS mental health Trusts.. Its intimidating and upsetting people . Some of us are so affected by the assault of the planning gurus that we do wonder if death is better . Now that's being hurt .

But on therapy there should have crucially been choices not just one favoured application (CBT) and all the training money to my mind gone to it is wasted when its obvious we could have enjoyed monitored patient choices years ago using available local supply sides . God knows some of us could have grown into more functionality .

The whole point for me and others in the User-community was to believe in a patient recovery led by choices and incremental growth . Its what we were all promised . I've seen CBT used by "practitioners" in the NHS where they expect the patient to do"homework" to identify negatively co-reinforcing thought and feeling patterns and the poor boggers have been lost .

I've talked to these people and discovered so many are seriously wounded people from life and they need deeper more empathically providing applications

After your post I have taken a decision to ask USERWATCH to make an exception against CBT slagging off and therefore you have been offered a Dogology .. Now this is rare

I'd swipe a copy of it quick ..

SEE HERE A special dogology to Lord Brett ..

Seeeeee now I do have the power of magical smiling and wickedish therapy which makes Lords laugh ..

Silvis Rivers

USERWATCH

CBT Neck Bolting Cog-Bottery Success Story With Toilet Roll Accessories


WELFARE DEFORMED

A CBT Success Story With Toilet Roll Earing Too

By Silvis Rivers Cheek Practitioner

Monday, June 22, 2009

Lobbying Dr Lynne Jones To Support Welfare Reform Amendments

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Letter By Email Copied To Birmingham UserWatch


Dr Lynne Jones
Joint Chair
All Parliamentary Mental Health
Sub Committee

22nd June 2009

Dear Lynne

Jon Rutherford (Guardian Journalist)

Has written today that the Welfare Reform Bill at this stage is currently
under potential amendment in the Lords and the Lib Dems are trying to get
a clause inserted to protect the mentally ill with difficult conditions .

I am asking you for your support in this because I feel there are many
people that need actually defending from what is a potentially oppressive bill

Regards

Paul Brian Tovey

Independent Mental Health Monitor