this morning Vicky, a victim of the Manchester bombing was interviewed on Radio 5 Live she managed to say live how crap she had found the IAPT service. But in the actual recordings she had said how the therapist wanted to persist with trauma focussed CBT/EMDR whilst she wanted to talk about how devastated her child, who accompanied her, was. Not content with this the therapist was constantly looking at the clock and door. On the same programme IAPT clinicians spoke incognito about pressure to fiddle results on the psychometric tests used to assess outcome. Earlier in the day the public had their say, see link below:
https://mobile.twitter.com/bbc5live/status/1194542289663746048
for those directly involved the response was uniformly negative.
Contrast the above with the comments of Prof Paul Salkovskis, President of BABCP, a prime mover in the genesis of IAPT, who described it as ‘marvellous’ but that ‘there are inevitably a few bad apples amongst the IAPT staff’. NHS England waded in, in similar vein and reiterated IAPT’s claim that 5 out of 10 recover and 7 out of 10 at least move to recovery. See Radio 5 Live podcast, the pertinent section is from 10.43 to 10.55am
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b5wk
I had recorded for the BBC an interview in which I said that it was criminal that over £3 billion had been spent on IAPT without independent audit. It has not been broadcast. I presented data on 90 consecutive clients going through IAPT, some before and others after a personal injury (PI) with a 10% recovery rate overall and no difference as to whether before or after. I had no axe to grind over IAPT, I simply discovered that it was failing people. This study was eventually published last year, together with 3 commentary papers and my rebuttal in a Special Issue of the Journal of Health Psychology https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1359105318781872.
Interestingly an earlier version of the paper was rejected by the Editor of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, Prof Paul Salkovskis. To date the BBC seems to have preferred to broadcast his comments, which are without direct and systematic contact with IAPT clients rather than mine.
The powerholders have it, it seems, but I am not going to give up, earlier this week I saw a guy ( a non litigant), call him Dominic who, I discovered after a 1.5 hours assessment had been suffering from depression and generalised anxiety disorder for 2 years. He had previously had a 15 minute telephone assessment with IAPT , had no more understanding of his condition than before but the assessor opined that he seemed anxious because he had listed a long list of problems. Dominic was told that he would hear from them to attend a group, I asked him ‘a group for what?’ and he didn’t know. He then asked me ‘how could I talk about all my problems in a group?’. Dominic said that he had got more out of our chat than in 2 years of seeing his GP and IAPT. Unfortunately most will not escape IAPT’s clutches.
Someone remind me why I am still a member of BABCP.
Dr Mike Scott