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BABCP Response - NICE Consultation January 2022

The Ongoing Gagging of Discussion About IAPT Following ‘Has IAPT Become A Bit Like Frankenstein’s Monster?’

Ongoing discussion of this matter in CBT Today would have reached an audience of the 12,000 BABCP members. The Editor agreed with the President that the appropriate Forum was not the magazine but the online CBT Cafe. On March 12th I protested about this with a post on the CBT Cafe, there was just one response 8 days later by the BABCP President, Paul Salkovskis. Nearly a month since there has been no further post from anyone on the CBT Cafe! Whatever the intent of the President and the Editor of CBT Today, discussion has been clearly sidelined and the matter of Editorial freedom in CBT Today has not been addressed at all.

Jason Roscoes’ critique of IAPT in CBT Today, can be accessed below

https://www.dropbox.com/s/myz53dyn8zqhj13/Has%20IAPT%20become%20a%20bit%20like%20Frankenstein.docx?dl=0

BABCP is undoubtedly very powerful and well connected but its’ credibility as the ‘lead organisation’ for CBT must be in doubt, given its’ unswerving support for IAPT.

Dr Mike Scott

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BABCP Response - NICE Consultation January 2022

IAPT – The Need For A Product Recall

In response to David Clark’s blog ‘IAPT at 10’ on the NHS England website, I wrote: ‘If NHS England invited the manufacturer of a pharmaceutical to review the growth and successes of its’ drug over the last decade eyebrows would be raised. Yet this is precisely what has happened in asking David Clark to comment on his baby (IAPT) with whom he has an ongoing commitment and financial arrangement. In terms of publication bias his piece is off the scale.

No Independent Replication

There has never been independent replication of IAPT’s claim to 50% recovery. My own work, which is wholly independent of IAPT and was published in the Journal of Health Psychology   last year (see link below)  suggests a 10% recovery rate.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/flvxtq2jyhmn6i1/IAPT%20The%20Need%20for%20Radical%20Reform.pdf?dl=0

Questionnaires Rather Than An Independently Administered Standardised Diagnostic Interview

IAPT relies on questionnaires completed by clients with the full knowledge of the treating clinician, introducing a ‘demand’ element into the proceedings. Further there is in IAPT’s procedures no way of knowing that the questionnaire/s are tapping the disorder/s that are germane to the client. 

No Evidence of An Added Value To IAPT When Compared With Findings Before Its’ Inception

The changes in questionnaire scores observed in IAPT clients are no different to those observed on self-report measures administered to clients going through counselling before the advent of IAPT. The Mullin (2006) findings (see link below) are the appropriate counterfactual and indicate no added value to IAPT.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8a4qv5r13rotkyy/Appropriate%20Counterfactual%20Mullin%202006.pdf?dl=0

Clients present for therapy at their worst and some improvement with time would inevitably be visible on a questionnaire, IAPT has provided no evidence that clients given simply attention would not have shown the same changes to those observed.

The Jettisoning of Evaluation Guidelines

Entry into Pharmaceutical/Psychological Studies is governed by the administration of a standardised diagnostic interview. Outcome is determined by blind re-administration of the interview at the end of treatment and follow up. In line with this, an international team of Experts [Guidi et al (2018) see link below] have developed evaluation guidelines stipulating the need for blind independent assessment of psychological interventions. All IAPT generated studies have breached these guidelines.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hizta38yqm4lfh3/Methodological%20Recommendations%20for%20Trials%20of%20Psychological%20Interventions.pdf?dl=0

Countries that do not look at psychological interventions through the lens of such evaluation guidelines will be taken in by IAPT’s marketing prowess. Unfortunately many such countries have shown such gullibility in the last decade.

Failure to Engage and Treat Clients

IAPT loudly proclaims the very large number of clients that it makes contact with but this is meaningless when their trajectory is considered. Half of those referred to or referring themselves to IAPT   have less than 2 treatment sessions.  The mean number of sessions attended for those who have 2 or more sessions is 6, there is no NICE approved treatment for a psychological disorder that requires just 6 sessions.  It is scarcely credible that IAPT is providing an evidence based treatment on any scale. There is an an independent re-analysis of the IAPT data in the link below

http://therapymeetsnumbers.com/is-iapt-too-big-to-fail/

A Failure of Governance

IAPT is essentially a QUANGO dependent on NHS England, and committed to expansion but without any observance of evaluation guidelines.  NHS England has taken IAPT’s claims at face value, as a consequence Clinical Commissioning Groups focus only on operational matter, numbers, waiting times etc with no focus on clinical matters in their interactions with IAPT. The National Audit Office conducted an inquiry into IAPT but has failed to publish its’ results. There has been a gross failure of governance by public bodies and their representatives.

Only The Voice Of IAPT’s Hierarchy Is Listened To

There has been no attempt by public bodies to independently seek the views of consumers of IAPT services. However an IAPT teacher, Jason Roscoe has publicly made a blistering attack on the service, see link below

https://www.dropbox.com/s/myz53dyn8zqhj13/Has%20IAPT%20become%20a%20bit%20like%20Frankenstein.docx?dl=0

He reflects ‘the gap between what the literature advises and what management allow seems to be widening leaving the patients as the ones who are being given sub-therapeutic, watered-down CBT’ and adds ‘The result? A revolving door where patients return in quick succession for multiple episodes of treatment with a different therapist each time…..not only this IAPT also seems to be making its own workers ill with reports of compassion fatigue and burnout not uncommon’.

The views of the 90 IAPT clients I examined were almost wholly negative and indicated the need to transform IAPT see link below

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zhr1fkg71aqvno0/Transforming%20IAPT.pdf?dl=0

IAPT The Need For Product Recall

There are such serious doubts about what IAPT has delivered over the last decade, that if it were a piece of machinery the product would have been recalled. A decade ago I wrote a book on how CBT can be delivered, with fidelity to evidence based treatment protocols, [Scott (2009) Simply Effective Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, London: Routledge], there is a pressing need to review such provision. In private communication with David Clark I have acknowledged that my approach would make the assessment process more costly. However the evidence of the past decade is that it is not possible to make a real world difference to client’s lives without closely following the procedures involved in randomised controlled trials of CBT. Departure from reliable assessment, diagnosis, advice/treatment results in a failure to translate efficacious treatments to routine practice’.

Unfortunately NHS England only permits upto 1000 character comments on their invited blogs, so essentially only the 1st paragraph of this blog will likely appear.

Dr Mike Scott

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BABCP Response - NICE Consultation January 2022

The Gagging of Discussion About IAPT Following ‘Has IAPT Become A Bit Like Frankenstein’s Monster?’

I have just put the following post on the rarely used BABCP Discussion Forum, CBT Cafe, the only sanctioned vehicle for such expression:

‘BABCP has effectively gagged discussion of IAPT by refusing correspondence about Jason’s article (and David Clark’s response) in CBT Today. The suggestion that the CBT Cafe is the appropriate place for the discussion is ludicrous, as the most responded to thread there is the ‘Cafe with little Discussion’, with only two responses to Jason’s article and 30 views in the week since publication. By contrast CBT Today is seen by the 10,000 membership! If you wanted to sideline discussion this was the perfect way to do it. It would have been bad enough if this was an editorial decision (but editorial freedom is important) but when it was decided by the President this raises serious issues. Interestingly the two responses to Jason’s article were critical of IAPT, but criticisms are almost only ever made anonymously, such are the high levels of fear amongst clinicians. BABCP has studiously failed to grasp the nettle about IAPT, fear pervades the Cafe, people are ducking under the table’.

Dr Mike Scott

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BABCP Response - NICE Consultation January 2022

IAPT’S Apologists Rule And Brook No Dissent


Peter Elliott, Editor of CBT Today, yesterday e-mailed me ‘It was decided by Paul Salkovskis (President of BABCP) that the magazine would not hold any further responses to Jason Roscoe’s comments. I ought to have made this clearer in the statement. The intention was not to simply shut down further comment, just that the magazine would not be used to host further responses or comments’ on “Has IAPT become a bit like Frankenstein’s monster?”. But there is no other forum within BABCP for such a discussion! This missive confirms that the monster has extensive tentacles choking discussion. In CBT Today articles on IAPT have only appeared from those with a financial connection with IAPT, this necessarily compromises objectivity and limits the extent of any possible criticism. I have long mused that attendance at the BABCP Annual Conference feels a bit like attending a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, there are it seems disturbing similarities. My colleague Steve Flatt has referred to Stalinesque behaviour.

Dr Mike Scott

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BABCP Response - NICE Consultation January 2022

IAPT Teacher’s Blistering Attack On The Service

writing in the current issue of BABCP’s in-house magazine CBT Today, Jason Roscoe, comments that the service may be likened to Frankenstein. His intentions were good but the outcome monstrous.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hozljbsbz21ceso/20190301_092733.jpg?dl=0

He reflects ‘the gap between what the literature advises and what management allow seems to be widening leaving the patients as the ones who are being given sub-therapeutic, watered-down CBT’.

Revolving Door and Burnout

Jason continues ‘The result? A revolving door where patients return in quick succession f or multiple episodes of treatment with a different therapist each time…..not only this IAPT also seems to be making its own workers ill with reports of compassion fatigue and burnout not uncommon’

IAPT’s Reply

David M Clark the leading light in IAPT was invited to reply (but his status in IAPT was not referred to) and in essence he says the Service should not be as Jason describes because of the IAPT Manual (www.england.nhs.uk) and re-iterates his claim that 5 in every 10 of those undergoing treatment (attending 2 or more sessions). This is very misleading (see Barry McInnes’s, independent analysis of the IAPT data set in a previous post).

Stalinesque

The editor of CBT adds a tailpiece ‘Please note – no further correspondence on this will be entered into’. I have written to the editor asking who decided this and on what basis. I note that BABCP has never allowed any criticism of IAPT by anyone independent of IAPT in its pages. It is deeply disturbing that in the same issue of CBT Today there is a piece titled ‘BABCP Response to the NHS 10 Year Plan’ and states “BABCP welcomes the celebration of IAPT services in England as ‘world leading’…We support continued funding of IAPT training places”.

Stay and Change Things In BABCP?

There is a need within BABCP for a broad church with regard to IAPT, but opposing views, from anyone independent of IAPT are not represented in journals or at conferences. A colleague recently described the situation as Stalinesque, (indeed Jason may have committed professional suicide) the danger is that people will vote with their feet, but this is made difficult as BABCP accreditation is a pre-requisite for many posts. The ‘stay and change’ gong has been sounded loudly in our political parties and it is echoing in BABCP but some will think (if only privately) what’s the point? Perhaps going through the motions. I continue to do my bit, chairing the recently formed Group CBT SIG and running a workshop, but I have grave misgivings.

Dr Mike Scott