A Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner Breaks The Wall of Silence

 

I will never forget how, when I started working at the IAPT call-centre, I was stressed and rested my head for a few moments. I was interrupted by a “clinical psychologist” who in accusatory tone proclaimed that, “it does not seem that you are working”. The die it seems was cast. Not once in my 3 years as a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner (PWP) have I felt that anyone at work cared for one another.

 

 

‘When I Want Your Opinion I’ll Give It To You’

 

Naively I thought that “psychological services” would be a haven of openness, not a venue as “hellish” as any other sales related job. Contentious issues were not allowed to be placed on the agenda at meetings. If I dared to bring up issues that mattered, the Managers would “have a word with me in private”. It felt like “The Twilight Zone” and “Twin Peaks”; you could feel something was not right, but everyone pretended that things were fine and that it was me who was the problem. If there was any issue with what I said, no one gently told me, instead they went straight to my manager. So, I always felt paranoid that whatever I say or do, may be reported.

I will never forget the moments where I would try to bring up a new approach or new knowledge only to be told “it is not in line with NICE and IAPT” and “do not read extra information because you will not need it”. A re-enactment of George Orwell’s 1984, rather than the delivery of a 21^st Century psychological service. Worryingly this seems to be the norm in the NHS, with the frontline troops powerless. 

 

What It Is Really Like At The Coal Face

 

The short end of it all is that being a PWP is very similar to run of the mill call-centre, telemarking and sales job. No matter what the average worker says “but we do a great service”, I feel they are a tad bit delusional. I do not blame them. To survive this job you either need to resort to trickery or delude yourself that you are doing something worthwhile. The latter group probably have a mortgage to pay. We are told what to say, how to say it, when to say it and constantly told “it’s all about the numbers/targets”. We also have a script, which is very similar to those phone contract customer service people. The hellish brilliance of IAPT is that if the targets are not reached, the organisation uses an attributional bias to blame the “practitioners”/miners and not the “system”/pit owners and fellow travellers.

 

The Re-Branding of What Doesn’t Work, Doesn’t Work

 

Pre-IAPT there were “mental health workers (MHWs)”, and the public had some idea of the discharge of this particular, professional role. But from 2008 MHWs became Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners, leaving the public and professionals scratching their head as to what the designation might mean. Where PWPs to be regarded as professionals or not? Despite the inherent confusion, I followed my work’s advice to the letter: did the questionnaires, kept the original scores and ploughed onwards. However, what I noticed is that many clients (I dislike using the term patients because it doesn’t feel like we are official clinicians either) were finishing treatment or dropping out with “high scores”. It was not too long until I was interrogated for a below 50% recovery rate.

 

Jumping Through The Hoops of ‘Recovery’

 

The recovery rate of 50% is impossible unless one manipulates the numbers or manipulates the clients to be compliant. I guess, good old fashioned “sales tactics” (convincing people they need a product or that they are better than when they started). Of course, the Managers did not care. Safe to say, I found a crack in the system: since the powers all care about numbers, if you deliver the numbers, they will not question you. However, dare you dip below what is expected of their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), then they are like bloodhounds searching for you. But there has never been a real world KPI that a client would recognise, such as being back to their old selves for at least 8 weeks after treatment. Instead clients are expected at each session to doodle on questionnaires in the prescence of the PWP and bizarrely, these are used as the metrics of recovery.

 

At the coal face, I can conceal, to a limited extent what I am doing from the powers that be and deliver something of benefit. I do not hound them for the questionnaires every single time because let us face it, that creates a major barrier in treatment. Also, we are not MDs or Clinical Psychologists that can diagnose. It is a joke when we have to collect the data because it is meaningless.

 

Helplessness

 

The issue then becomes that I did not feel like I was learning anything. All I was learning was how to manage office politics and be a better liar. One could apply for High Intensity Training but they still focus on targets, so, no thanks. Any person of good conscience will not last long in IAPT. If you have any issues as a worker with IAPT, they will say it is a “you” problem. I once mistakenly vented my frustrations with how they were doing things at a meeting. This resulted in evident displeasure and near the end the next meeting was told to “this is not a space to vent grievances”. If the clients and workers had a platform to vent their frustrations, I do not think IAPT would still be operational. 

 

PWPs Ambassadors For A ‘Failed State’?

 

Working in IAPT is robotic: clicking tabs, ticking boxes and collecting numbers – a                                de-humanising experience.  There is little to encourage anyone to become a PWP. In fairness I suppose, at least a personal level, I have survived lockdown financially. But the service has in effect been “cooking the books” and making the company look good. I fear for the mental health not only of the ambassadors but for that of clients past and to come.

 

I am off to other pastures, can you wonder at the turnover?

 

Bernice ( a pseudonym)