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Why Is NHS Talking Therapy The Only Unregulated NHS Service?

With no independent body assessing caring and effectiveness. It has been achieved by IAPT (the former brand name of the service) and BABCP (British Association of of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies) working under the radar. Their curious tango has prevented the delivery of evidence-based psychological therapy in routine  practice.  They dance for politicians, the Department of Health and Integrated Care Boards (the successors to Clinical Commissioning Groups).

The public face of NHS Talking Therapy and BABCP and their synergy can be seen in an advertised two day BABCP workshop for social anxiety disorder. To be led by Professor David Clark,NHS England’s National Clinical and Informatics Advisor for the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. He and Lord Layard were the prime movers in the development of IAPT.

In advertising the Workshop Professor Clark describes very well an evidence based protocol for treating social anxiety disorder. But there is no evidence any such protocol has has ever been delivered in IAPT. The service has never performed integrity checks for this or any disorder. My own finding Scott (2018) is that only the tip of the iceberg of the Services clients recover in the sense of losing their diagnostic status. NHS Talking Therapies claims to deliver NICE treatment protocols and achieve a 50% recovery rate are self-serving claims, wholly without independent evidence.

The recommended protocol is based on a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder and as the IAPT Manual points out, its clinicians do not make diagnosis and 40% of them are not trained therapists. Both NHS Talking therapy and BABCP have shown no interest in what happens at the coalface, they operate like totalitarian Communist regimes concerned with ideology, operational matters  production quotas, waiting times etc. Like the KGB and Stasi they are superb at working under the radar (see the book Putin’s People) and networking but leaving clients to disappear down a black hole, with almost half of clients not even beginning treatment.

Dr Mike Scott