Destructive Trends in Mental Health
THE WELL-INTENTIONED PATH TO HARM
by Rogers H Wright and Nicholas A. Cummings
This book should be required reading for all mental health professionals. Two eminent psychologists with deep and impressive credentials along with many decades of experience describe alarming trends in the mental health field In the preface Dr. Wright shares that he and his colleague have a long history of supporting progressive and rather liberal government and social policies but are alarmed about how the mental health field has and is doing great harm to individuals and society and often supported and paid for with government assistance. There are experienced, credentialed, eminent professionals that articulate an impressive amount of common sense. Ideas like claiming victim-hood as self defeating, false accusers should have consequences (or there will be a flood of accusations), that medications are easier to take than exercising self regulation or that mental health systems favor making money over achieving better health. All this makes so much sense and yet at the root of many mental health issues we struggle with recognizing these facts.
The book discusses the bias that seeks to exterminate "politically conservative" viewpoints from the American Psychological Association is studied and verified. The use of the association resources for liberal causes are noted. The harm of having a professional association with a monolithic socio-political outlook is questioned. Unfortunately there authors, while clearly detailing the present status, fail to fully examine the interactions and feedback mechanism between the APA members and an ever growing government that seeks to regulate, tax and provide grants to those cooperative APA members (if they are of the right party).
The book is divided into three broad sections including 4 chapters under "Political Correctness, Sensitivity and Diversity" (Chapters 1-4), 4 chapters under "Mental Health Economics" (Chapters 5-8) and 7 chapters under "Political Influence on Science and Practice" (Chapters 9-15).
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INTERESTING QUOTES from "Destructive Trends in Mental Health
THE WELL-INTENTIONED PATH TO HARM"
Questioning...equated with lack of compassion...
"Unfortunately, questioning the efficacy of certain popular therapies is equated by many practitioners with lack of compassion toward those who are ostensibly benefiting from dubious treatments. A prime example is the decade-long controversy over repressed memories of incest, and whether these were implanted by well-meaning therapists. A task force appointed by the APA to look into the controversy became politically polarized, and the matter was finally settled by the courts. Society spent a number of years sentencing fathers to prison based on false memories, followed by years of releasing them with the court's apology as accusers became aware of the implanted memories. Practitioners lost their licenses, and many were subsequently sued by those they had accused. Meanwhile, the APA remains politically polarized over the issue."
pg XV
Victimhood...
".....When our rights were denied, we became victims.
Such victim-hood, which allows escape from personal responsibility and elicits redress by others, has often reached the point of absurdity, fostered by those anxious to help the aggrieved, including trial lawyers and some mental health providers."
pg XXV
Spurious and non-effective services...
"Such services as grief counseling and trauma counseling lack solid evidence of lasting merit. In fact, evidence emerging from therapists treating workers of the 9/11 tragedy suggests that the immediate counseling prevents some individuals from assimilating the experience."
pg XXIII
Best practices do not include repressed memories of incest...
"...a pressing practice issue came in response to the surge a few years ago of the so-called recovery or repressed incest memories that sent many innocent fathers to prison. Researchers in recovered memory found evidence that such "memories" could be created in the susceptible individual, especially under conditions of hypnosis or the repeated prodding of an overly zealous practitioner.
The debate became so compelling that the APA appointed a task-force to make recommendations on the matter because society was in dire need of a scientific and professional resolution to a psycho-therapeutic procedure that was getting out of hand. The taskforce met for several years and was bogged down by political correctness. Those who proposed caution and attention to the pertinent research we accused of being anti-feminist, indifferent to the the plight of incest survivors, or supportive of male paternalism that was the root cause of incest. The matter was settled not by psychology but by the courts, which determined that the propensity for the recovery of false memories was overwhelming. The judicial system spent the next decade releasing fathers from prison and punishing the overly zealous practitioners who had inadvertently planted false memories.
The debate still rages within psychology, while society has settled the matter in its own way and without definitive professional or scientific input from psychology. Even the most ardent proponents of recovered incest memories no longer press their patients to seek legal redress because of the chilling effect on such practice not by the profession but by the courts.
....psychology has rendered itself incapable of addressing the issue of best practices."
The debate became so compelling that the APA appointed a task-force to make recommendations on the matter because society was in dire need of a scientific and professional resolution to a psycho-therapeutic procedure that was getting out of hand. The taskforce met for several years and was bogged down by political correctness. Those who proposed caution and attention to the pertinent research we accused of being anti-feminist, indifferent to the the plight of incest survivors, or supportive of male paternalism that was the root cause of incest. The matter was settled not by psychology but by the courts, which determined that the propensity for the recovery of false memories was overwhelming. The judicial system spent the next decade releasing fathers from prison and punishing the overly zealous practitioners who had inadvertently planted false memories.
The debate still rages within psychology, while society has settled the matter in its own way and without definitive professional or scientific input from psychology. Even the most ardent proponents of recovered incest memories no longer press their patients to seek legal redress because of the chilling effect on such practice not by the profession but by the courts.
....psychology has rendered itself incapable of addressing the issue of best practices."
pg 15-16
Easy to accuse...
"It has become to easy to accuse. Persons who are members of a federally protected class are rarely held accountable for their allegations. This laxity has allowed many to accuse first and then try to muster facts later, if at all...The accusations [rape] are serious matters and have tremendous potentital to do last harm. If there is evidence that all males are rapists, it is reasonable and just claim. If evidence does not exist, then it is a harmful and false allegation. The ethic of accusation should involve something similar to the indictment process. The accuser should immediately muster some fairly convincing evidence that such claims are warranted. If such evidence is clearly missing, the accused should NOT have the burden of further clearing his or her name; rather, the accuser should experience appropriate consequences."
pg 25
Victims compete...
"We have become a nation of victims, leapfrogging over one another to compete publicly for the status of victim and defining everyone as some sort of survivor. Many people in recovery shamelessly compare their individual sagas of abuse in alcoholic families or sexual harassment on the job with experience of World War II Holocaust survivors who endured the atrocities of the concentration camps (Herman 1992). Today it is fashionable to be a victim."
pg 49
Mentally ill need drugs...
"The current psychiatric belief is that even those who are in contact with reality and could get counseled are still mentally ill and are better treated with psychiatric drugs......
This now-dominant psychiatric practice supported by a multimillion-dollar media blitz paid for by the drug industry, has been so successful that it has been accepted not only by most psychiatrists but by almost all medical doctors, many psychologists, social workers, and counselors. It is the way the current medical system makes money from unhappiness and is embraced by the general public that has no easy access to the truth.
We have learned to go for the quick fix. Our society has become accustomed to the concept of medicating discomfort with over the counter pills, syrups and potions. The public likes the simplicity of the argument: a person with psychological problems is ill, and all that's necessary to make life better is to take a pill. The public has no awareness that the price of this pill is to blind patients to the concept that they can pursue happiness and mental health on their own. There is a further price to be paid, however, by taking strong brain drugs. Many of them harm the brain and, in so doing, cause the symptoms....
This harm may be called side effects by physicians, but once these chemicals are in your brain there is nothing "side" about them. In his book Prosiac Backlash Joseph Glenmullen MD (2000) points out many of these side effects and also explains that some of them start when the drug is discontinued. Thus getting off the drug is not always safe."
This now-dominant psychiatric practice supported by a multimillion-dollar media blitz paid for by the drug industry, has been so successful that it has been accepted not only by most psychiatrists but by almost all medical doctors, many psychologists, social workers, and counselors. It is the way the current medical system makes money from unhappiness and is embraced by the general public that has no easy access to the truth.
We have learned to go for the quick fix. Our society has become accustomed to the concept of medicating discomfort with over the counter pills, syrups and potions. The public likes the simplicity of the argument: a person with psychological problems is ill, and all that's necessary to make life better is to take a pill. The public has no awareness that the price of this pill is to blind patients to the concept that they can pursue happiness and mental health on their own. There is a further price to be paid, however, by taking strong brain drugs. Many of them harm the brain and, in so doing, cause the symptoms....
This harm may be called side effects by physicians, but once these chemicals are in your brain there is nothing "side" about them. In his book Prosiac Backlash Joseph Glenmullen MD (2000) points out many of these side effects and also explains that some of them start when the drug is discontinued. Thus getting off the drug is not always safe."
pg 122-3
Mental health practices can be bad for your mental health...
"Mental health practices can be bad for your mental health. As counter intuitive as this conclusion may appear it has been borne out out by a substantial body of research over the past two decades."
"Mental health practices can be bad for your mental health. As counter intuitive as this conclusion may appear it has been borne out out by a substantial body of research over the past two decades."
pg 187
Errant techniques used by counselors...
"...published surveys indicate that approximately 25 percent of American and Canadian doctoral-level psycho-therapists made regular use of suggestive methods such as hypnosis, guided imagery, dream interpretation, free association to childhood memories, journaling, interpretation of ambiguous symptoms, and body work (i.e. focus on physical sensations), to recover purported memories of child abuse. Nevertheless, research strongly suggests that these and other suggestive techniques that include 'truth serum' (a barbiturate that is not actually a truth serum) and 'trance writing' (penning reports of abuse while in an apparent trance states) place clients at considerable risk for false memories of abuse."
pg 192
Recovered Memory Interventions
is a section found among programs in chapter titled "Pseudoscience, Nonscience and Nonsense in Clinical Psychology" states:
"...For example, numerous laboratory studies have found hypnosis to increase the sheer volume of memory recall, both accurate and inaccurate. Hypnosis is also associated with an increased proportion of false memories, although it increases participants confidence in their memories, even false ones. Nor does hypnotic age regression accurately reinstate past memories.
is a section found among programs in chapter titled "Pseudoscience, Nonscience and Nonsense in Clinical Psychology" states:
"...For example, numerous laboratory studies have found hypnosis to increase the sheer volume of memory recall, both accurate and inaccurate. Hypnosis is also associated with an increased proportion of false memories, although it increases participants confidence in their memories, even false ones. Nor does hypnotic age regression accurately reinstate past memories.
Studies using imagination inflation paradigm demonstrate that merely thinking about a previous (nonexistant) event increases the likelihood that this event will be reported as having occurred. These investigations raise serious questions concerning the use of guided imagery, whereby therapists encourage clients to imagine various events that may or may not have occurred (e.g. child abuse). In addition, studies demonstrate that interpreting a dream as symbolic of a past experience (e.g. being lost in a public place in childhood) increases the likelihood that participants will report that experience as having occurred. These study results raise the disquieting possibility that therapists who use suggestive techniques to recover traumatic memories are inadvertently creating, not discovering, these memories in their clients. Some may be inducing variants or full-blown forms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
....there is ample reason to believe that these (laboratory) studies markedly underestimate the likelihood of false memory implantation. Clinicians frequently prompt clients repeatedly for past memories, both within and across psychotherapy sessions. Moreover, the social pressures and demand characteristics of the modal therapy sessions are almost certainly higher than those of a one shot laboratory study in which participants interact only briefly and superficially with an experimenter they have never met.....some experimenters have found that suggestive memory procedures twenty to twenty-five-percent of college participants to report having experienced a serious animal attack or a serious injury. Cases in which clients report alien abductions following suggestive procedures furnish virtual proof for the assertion that such procedures produce false memories..."
....there is ample reason to believe that these (laboratory) studies markedly underestimate the likelihood of false memory implantation. Clinicians frequently prompt clients repeatedly for past memories, both within and across psychotherapy sessions. Moreover, the social pressures and demand characteristics of the modal therapy sessions are almost certainly higher than those of a one shot laboratory study in which participants interact only briefly and superficially with an experimenter they have never met.....some experimenters have found that suggestive memory procedures twenty to twenty-five-percent of college participants to report having experienced a serious animal attack or a serious injury. Cases in which clients report alien abductions following suggestive procedures furnish virtual proof for the assertion that such procedures produce false memories..."
pg 201-2
Drug the children instead of disciplining them...
"...should the child wind up on the receiving end of one of the drugs used to treat ADHD, the child's parents will undoubtedly report fewer daytime discipline problems, including tantrums. That leaves the sleeping problems, for which the child's pediatrician might prescribe a second medication to which the child might well respond positively. And in no time at all, we have another set of parents who are on their way to being addicted to giving their child drugs whenever a behvior problem rears its ugly little head.
This speaks to the dangerous drift in modern pediatrics: the tendency to isolate a child's behavior from its context and judge the behavior, rather than the parents' management of it, as the problem. If this drift continues we face a future where not only relatively few parents practice old fashioned (i.e. effective) discipline, but one in which discipline itself has become old fashioned."
pg 233
RESEARCH ON MEMORY BASED THERAPY
BOOKS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
LEGAL CASES AND PRECEDENTS
HARMFUL PRAYER MINISTRY
PERSONAL "MEMORY HEALING" STORIES
VIDEOS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
EXPERT LECTURES ON HARMFUL THERAPIES
NEWS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
CLINICAL HEALING AND MEMORY
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RESEARCH ON MEMORY BASED THERAPY
BOOKS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
LEGAL CASES AND PRECEDENTS
HARMFUL PRAYER MINISTRY
PERSONAL "MEMORY HEALING" STORIES
VIDEOS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
EXPERT LECTURES ON HARMFUL THERAPIES
NEWS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
CLINICAL HEALING AND MEMORY
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| Pictures are prior to recovered memories in 2015. |
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*** WARNING ***
If you are seeking help for personal struggles and a therapist, counselor or friend says that "recovering childhood memories can help you get better" then IMMEDIATELY get up from your chair (or off the couch), run to the door, open it and flee. Hundreds of thousands have lost families, years of productive living and squandered immense wealth with tragedy inducing therapy that produces horrid false memories, splinters families, isolates the client and is documented to cause decline in mental health.
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This is an effort to Break the Cycle of Shame
and Save Others from Similar Tragedy!
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