On July 31st 2017, the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt announced funding for an extra 2,900 new therapists in Adult Mental Health talking therapy services. A week earlier the National Audit Office invited submissions for its’ investigation into IAPT, with a closing date of this Autumn. It is clearly the time of the year for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party:
be careful that you don’t mutter under your breath at such gatherings that ‘evidence should precede action’, if heard it could be ‘off with your head’.
But beware, the historian High Trevor Roper wrote in the Last Days of Hitler ‘mythopoeia is a far more common characteristic of the human race than veracity’. The wholesale endorsement of IAPT by BABCP and to a lesser extent by BPS reflects mythopoeia:
IAPT with its low intensity modality has attempted to make therapy ‘simpler’ than simple, resulting in ineffective treatment. When it comes to the high intensity modality it has made matters ‘simpler’ than simple, by abandoning reliable diagnosis/high specification of problem/s as a Sat Nav for treatment again often resulting in ineffective treatment.
Dr Mike Scott