No but Steve Melluish and D Bulmer replicated the model with a group of
men - published in JCASP around 2000. A longer account is on the
compsy.org.uk website in the papers from the 1999 Manchester conference.
And I too like the revised form of the letter.
Mark
> Re Richard's point about solidarity based sense making, does anyone have
> any up to date knowledge of/ references to the work of Sue Holland ( from
> social abuse to social action)?
>
>
>
> Annie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Annie Mitchell
>
>
>
> Clinical Director,
>
> Doctorate in Clinical Psychology,
>
> School of Applied Psychosocial Studies,
>
> Faculty of Health and Social Work,
>
> University of Plymouth,
>
> Peninsula Allied Health Collaboration,
>
> Derriford Road,
>
> Plymouth,
>
> Devon
>
> PL6 8BH
>
>
>
>
>
> Phone Programme Administrators:
> Jane Murch, Emma Hellingsworth
>
> 01752 233786
>
>
>
> Please note I work 3 days per week:
>
> usually Monday, Tuesday & either Wednesday or Thursday.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of richard pemberton
> Sent: 21 October 2007 13:20
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Mental Health Policy
>
>
>
> I think this letter is very good. But continuing to plow my 'positive'
> theme. Just suggesting that takling income inequality is the best primary
> prevention measure begs all sorts of interesting questions. Its an
> ecomonic remedy for the human condition? What are we saying are the other
> effective ways? Layard and Johnson are surely just mirroring all sorts of
> interesting cultural norms and the sucess of psychology and psychiatry in
> giving a language and licence for new frameworks for understanding despair
> madness and fear. Whats obviously missing is the social context for all
> this. Just to reverse the polarity and say its all social and economic is
> equally strange and limiting? .
>
> The way I am manging this in my job is to ask what needs to be in place
> for this Layardism not to bounce? Hence step zero. How do we increase
> opportunities for solidarity based sense making? How do we set this in a
> reasoned public health agenda where the levles of 'social recession' in a
> particular locality are known and well understood. Layard himself really
> is trying to get into this. If people have been given a meaningful choice,
> I am pretty relaxed if people want help with their 'bad thinking'.
> Sometimes I need help with my own. When I was a therapist I surprised by
> how helpful people found it to learn to stand outside themselves. People
> who were very low benfited much more than I would have expected from for
> example keeping a diary. I dont think I was contributing to their
> oppression. What I think is important is the connectedness between
> individual and social spaces and experiences good and bad
>
> This involves changing the way we think about them and live within them.
>
> I wonder if people have read the royal college of psychiatry document
> recovery a common purpose. This invites a complete rethinking of practice
> and education. Its much more first person than third person and seems to
> me to be explicitly social model based. One report doesnt represent a
> summer. Its dead interesting though that something as social as this is
> coming out of psychiatry.
>
> After I gave my talk on recovery wellbeing and positive psychology last
> week. I was approached by a member of the audience to say that they were
> about to set up a local community psychology network! Something definately
> seems to be in water.
>
>
>
> Richard
>
>
> On 10/21/07, julie bird <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Mark (and all)
>
> ..... 349 words... cut and paste.. but it might not be the cut and paste
> job that you would have done...
>
> (i'm getting caught up in wondering whether how we have signed suggests,
> however subtly, that you are either a 'service user'/survivor, OR an
> academic etc etc... am i going off on one here, or does anyone else think
> this is what could be read?does it matter? would be nice to know what
> others think). is it pedantic again? i'm not sure..
>
> Changing politicians' minds about changing our minds?
> We write in response to the Health Secretary's recent announcement that
> £170m is to be made available by 2010 to increase the availability of low
> intensity, high volume, psychological interventions. At present Cognitive
> Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is the preferred approach. While we welcome the
> belated recognition of widespread emotional distress in our community, and
> applaud the government's willingness to spend public money on it, we have
> a number of serious reservations about the approach adopted.
>
> CBT, and all like treatments, individualise social problems, draw
> attention away from the more important social, economic and material
> causes of distress and propose individual cognitive dysfunction as both
> the cause of people's problems and as the most appropriate site for
> intervention. Using a medicalised metaphor of 'illness' to describe
> human misery distracts attention away from the noxious effects on persons
> of structural poverty, unemployment, job insecurity, violence, abuse,
> racism, sexism, inequality and consumerism (among others) which are the
> root causes of human distress.
> Briefly, the scale of socially caused distress is so vast, and growing so
> rapidly, that it is impossible to 'treat it better', let alone 'cure' it,
> as Mr Johnson and Lord Layard have suggested, by training more therapists.
> It is, simply, not feasible to treat all of those in distress, one at a
> time, with any therapeutic technique.
>
> The approach announced is, we argue, not only conceptually misguided, but
> also likely to be socially and economically wasteful of scarce resources.
> Even assuming therapeutic success, when 'treated' many or most distressed
> people will return to the same psychologically toxic environments that
> produce distress and will be subjected to the same causes of distress all
> over again. CBT and associated approaches are thus comprehensively
> problematic. Primary prevention of distress at a society-wide level - not
> the 'cure' of individuals - is the only way to substantially reduce
> socially, economically and materially caused misery.
> Contemporary research shows that reducing income inequality in our society
> would be just one of the most effective ways to reduce psychological
> distress and physical ill health - not just for the disadvantaged - but
> across society in general.
>
> ________________________________
>
> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:23:57 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Fwd: Mental Health Policy
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> All
> Looks like I have a busy weekend.......
> M
>
> PS My affiliation and grandiose title not self-serving, all the papers
> seem to insist on a daytime phone number and address ;)
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: [log in to unmask] < [log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> >
> Date: 19 Oct 2007 11:42
> Subject: Re: Mental Health Policy
> To: Mark Rapley < [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> >
>
>
> Dear Mark
> Thanks. It's an interesting subject, but I'm afraid far too long at its
> current length; the letters we publish are a maximum of 350 words. If you
> would like to cut it and resubmit I'd be happy to look at it again.
> Jane
>
>
>
> "Mark Rapley" <[log in to unmask]> 19/10/2007 11:29
>
> To
>
> "[log in to unmask]" < [log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> >
>
> cc
>
>
>
> Subject
>
> Re: Mental Health Policy
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear Jane
> As requested.
> Best wishes,
> Mark
>
> 19th October 2007
>
>
>
>
> Dear Editor,
>
> Changing politicians' minds about changing our minds?
>
> We write in response to the Health Secretary's recent announcement that
> £170m is to be made available by 2010 to increase the availability of low
> intensity, high volume, psychological interventions. At present Cognitive
> Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is the preferred approach, to be delivered at
> primary care level to adults of working age, by people who have some basic
> training.
>
> While we welcome the belated recognition of widespread emotional distress
> in our community, and applaud the government's willingness to spend public
> money on it, we have a number of serious reservations about the approach
> adopted. Briefly, the scale of socially caused distress is so vast, and
> growing so rapidly, that it is impossible to 'treat it better', let alone
> 'cure' it, as Mr Johnson and Lord Layard have suggested, by training more
> therapists. It is, simply, not feasible to treat all of those in distress,
> one at a time, with any therapeutic technique.
>
> Even if we could train enough practitioners, there is good reason to
> believe that one-to-one talking treatments administered by professionals
> are mostly only marginally effective. While it is certainly the case that
> a wealth of evidence exists to suggest that professionally-delivered
> therapy, in the hands of some practitioners, for some people, may be of
> some benefit, effect sizes tend to be small. However, and the widely cited
> NICE Guidelines overlook this, the research base is also clear that not
> only may lay people be as effective as professionals in delivering help
> through talking and listening, but also that all talking therapies are
> effectively equivalent, and equivalently limited, especially for those in
> the most difficult living circumstances. This is so even when delivery is
> organised through the stepped care model that runs from use of self help
> guides to full therapeutic interventions.
>
> That is to say, not only is the effectiveness of CBT and kindred
> interventions - in any hands - widely exaggerated, but they are impossible
> to apply in many 'real world' situations and with many people. Indeed the
> widely reported 'cure' rates in the studies relied on by the government
> and its advisers are, actually, quite likely an artefact of the highly
> controlled nature of the randomised controlled trials (RCTs) which purport
> to demonstrate their effectiveness. As with all such clinical trials, RCTs
> by their very design can not, and do not, reflect the 'real world' where
> treatment is actually applied. As such, framing policy via reliance on
> their artificially-inflated success rates is either scientifically naive
> or politically expedient, or both.
>
> Moreover CBT, and all like treatments, individualise social problems, draw
> attention away from the more important social, economic and material
> causes of distress and propose individual cognitive dysfunction as both
> the cause of people's problems and as the most appropriate site for
> intervention. We note that a compelling account of the factors which have
> produced the present, and remarkably recent, 'epidemic' of individual
> cognitive dysfunction seems to be absent from the analyses that government
> has offered to date. We also note that the relentless focus on the
> individual, and their supposed cognitive deficits, illicitly employs a
> medicalised metaphor of 'illness' to describe human misery and thus
> distracts attention away from the noxious effects on persons of structural
> poverty, unemployment, job insecurity, violence, abuse, racism, sexism,
> inequality and consumerism (among others) which are the root causes of
> human distress. It is, surely, bad enough to be depressed because of
> difficult living circumstances or to be anxious because you are subjected
> to regular domestic violence, without currently popular theory suggesting
> your depression or anxiety are caused by your own irrational thinking.
> Blaming the victim like this simply proffers therapeutic ritual as a cure
> for societal oppression, whilst at the same time placing responsibility
> for distress and its' resolution onto the individual.
>
> The approach announced is, we argue, not only conceptually misguided, but
> also likely to be socially and economically wasteful of scarce resources.
> Even assuming therapeutic success, when 'treated' many or most distressed
> people will return to the same psychologically toxic environments that
> produce distress and will be subjected to the same causes of distress all
> over again. If they do not go back into immediately toxic contexts, there
> will still be a flood of newly damaged people as a result of the
> persistence of the social causes of distress ignored under present mental
> health policy settings. CBT and associated approaches are thus
> comprehensively problematic. Primary prevention of distress at a
> society-wide level - not the 'cure' of individuals - is the only way to
> substantially reduce socially, economically and materially caused misery.
>
> To be effective, primary prevention necessitates social not cognitive
> change. Contemporary research shows that reducing income inequality in our
> society would be just one of the most effective ways to reduce
> psychological distress and physical ill health - not just for the
> disadvantaged - but across society in general.
>
> Signatories
>
>
> Julia Bird, Jan Bostock, Mark Burton, Julie Chase, Deborah Chinn, Paul
> Cotterill, John Cromby, Dawn Darlaston-Jones, Bob Diamond, Paul Duckett,
> Suzanne Elliott , Michael Göpfert, Dave Harper, Carl Harris, Carolyn
> Kagan, Valeska Matziol, Steve Melluish, Annie Mitchell, Paul Moloney,
> Moira O'Connor, Penny Priest, Mark Rapley, David Smail, Janine
> Soffe-Caswell and Carl Walker on behalf of the UK Community Psychology
> Network, a group which includes academics, campaigners, mental health
> service users and survivors, health and social services managers, clinical
> psychologists, students and volunteer workers.
>
> Mark Rapley, PhD,
> Professor of Clinical Psychology,
> Programme Director - Doctoral Degree in Clinical Psychology,
> School of Psychology,
> University of East London,
> London, E15 4LZ,
> U.K.
>
> Tel: +44 (0)208 223 6392 (Direct)
> Tel: +44 (0)208 223 4567 (Messages)
> Tel: +44 (0)7951 908409 (Mobile)
>
>
> On 19/10/2007, [log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>
> Please could you resend this letter as an email; we are unable to accept
> attachments.
> Jane Campbell
> Letters
>
> "Mark Rapley" < [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> >
>
> 19/10/2007 10:40
>
>
>
> To
>
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> cc
>
>
>
> Subject
>
> Mental Health Policy
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear Editor,
> I attach a letter for publication from the UK Community Psychology
> Network.
> With best wishes,
> Yours sincerely,
> Mark Rapley
>
> http://www.independent.co.uk/
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