UK: Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) articles, blogs and discussion

Blog by OMEGA (the opposing mega group)
I can't vouch for the accuracy.

"A Letter to Jeremy Hunt .............and How Millions of ‘MUS’ Patients Lose Out in the NHS."

https://opposingmega.wordpress.com/2020/05/23/a-letter-to-jeremy-hunt/#comments

 

https://www.virology.ws/2020/06/02/trial-by-error-a-couple-of-blog-posts-worth-reading/

 

http://www.cbtwatch.com/iapts-modus-operandi-squeeze-the-client-into-the-briefest-cbt-then-eject/

 

Uh. Sensing a pattern here. Of sorts. No, that can't be, that would mean IAPT is largely a political project. That would be... yeah entirely consistent with all evidence.

This is a classic problem on which economics is years ahead. When you make the target of manipulation the same as the end point all you end up doing is making the manipulation the whole point.

Lessons from snakes in India:

Another example is the No child left behind initiative in the US. It made standardized testing the only target of education, with budgets being increased based on good results on standardized tests and defunding whole schools if they didn't meet targets. The end result? Schools literally orchestrated massive cheating for their students, helped supply test answers, manipulated scores, etc. The principals and faculties were all involved, because if they didn't cheat they were out of a job.

All of this for the low low cost of billions in direct spending and billions more in indirect productivity losses from just leaving disabled people out of the workforce by refusing to actually help them. What a bargain! Compared to just burning money in a very large pit, it definitely is!

 

Coming late to this thread, I have found it interesting. I was referred to a pain clinic and found it a crushing disappointment, but reading this, I realise that some of the confusion was because she was trying to give me ways of coping to lessen my distress without ever asking me what I already did. Of course I had only survived the previous twenty years because I had discovered all the things like distraction for myself and was not experiencing the distress of struggling to do things I previously did.

I had expected my pain medication to be reviewed and to talk about what things could help that she would know from experience but I had not thought of. Instead I was told I was experiencing anxiety (we never discussed my pain in 5 sessions) and when I denied it was assumed to be in denial. When she said she experienced anxiety and it was nothing to be ashamed of I asked why I was in a wheelchair when she wasn't. She said therapy was obviously not helping and I was discharged - in pain.

Something I have never understood in all the discussion of pain is that I do not feel I have chronic pain. I believe that every day I get acute pain because of whatever is going wrong with my body. There doesn't even seem to be an acknowledgement such a thing exists.

I would have liked to discuss that in a clinic but not to be.

 

The definitions are interesting. My muscles hurt when I have overused them, usually the next day. It is a deep burning pain that is usually affecting some part of my body but which part and how severe depends on what I have been doing. So I do not have chronic pain in my arms, just severe pain when I have used them beyond a certain point. My legs burn horribly if I stand for any length of time so it is not bad enough to stop me sleeping if I have barely stood on a given day.

I also get pain because my hands will twist. It would hurt anyone of they hold a hand in an unnatural position for hours at a time. No twist, no pain. I take pills which are not painkillers; they stop the pain because they stop the twisting

ME is a disease that causes damage in different parts of the body and that damage causes pain until it heals. The research which said there was no damage to muscles so it must be a central pain was not conclusive because of all the usual problems but it has been taken as gospel.

 

Private mental health services in Bristol investigated

https://thebristolcable.org/2020/06/inside-private-mental-health-services-in-bristol-investigated/

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1280149552377614342

 

What does "taken down in work" mean in the UK?

https://twitter.com/user/status/1280152855664615424

 

I would imagine it means being chastised, or gotten into trouble somehow. To take someone down usually means to topple them, maybe remove them from their position or simply win an argument against them.

I think that tweet by Anna Batho is pretty damning of a profession that provides talking therapy. If they can't have a discussion among themselves weighing pros and cons of the treatment they provide then they certainly won't be honestly evaluating that service and feeding back issues so as to improve matters for their patients.

If they can't even be honest with each other.....

 

Could mean all sorts - passed over for promotion, excluded from things, gently dissuaded from certain things being being informally spoken to, possibly something more formal.

 

Indeed. It seems that the primary aim of this type of clinical psychologist is to ingratiate oneself with ones peer group (even if that means including James Coyne) and to patronise patients. To advocate for patients in a way that is critical of peers is beyond the pale (as I was told by Michael Sharpe). And the strange belief that you can do this without anyone noticing betrays a complete lack of understanding of, what was it.. pissology, snipeology, I forget..., more or less human nature to everyone else.

 

I hate to say it but to me this just describes a typical MO of institutions in my lifetime. It's just another special-interest group and any benefit to the broader society is incidental to the actual underlying goal orientation.

 

In some areas, yes. But the much bigger problem was that school curricucla were all about "teaching to the test"--in other words, everything was geared toward improving the test scores rather than what made sense educationally.

 

What seems odd to me about this group is their openly discussing doing it, apparently unaware that human beings who are not psychologists might been earshot. In my experience mutual appreciation and troublemaker dumping amongst other communities is done rather more discreetly. Have suspicion that these psychologists think that other human beings are a bit like Labrador puppies.

 

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_institutions

 

coincidentally...........

http://www.cbtwatch.com/iapt-the-myth-and-the-reality-vanquished-by-babcp-presidents/

 

Perhaps failure to hold one's breadth should be referred to a dietician.