Could therapists, their supervisors and their professional bodies do more to protect the public?

Abstract

To be more specific, this editorial ventures, somewhat audaciously, to consider whether psychotherapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, arts and play therapists, psychologists, their supervisors, their trainers/educators and their professional bodies could do more to protect the public. When I started my psychotherapy training, many other trainees appeared to have already been there for around 10 years. I, whilst having already successfully completed a 3-year diploma in counselling, was to take much longer. Now I would agree that I was probably a more difficult ‘case’ than most, but would I currently be shown that – given therapeutic training today, or would I ‘get away with it’ to both my clients’ and my detriment? In the case of the UK, it is now possible to advertise as a psychotherapist on the main sites that the public uses to access therapy after 1-year full-time training or 2-year part-time training, appearing to be fully qualified. Furthermore, an increasing number of even 4-year part-time trainings do not require the trainee to go to the expense, time, and potential emotional furore, of having personal therapy. Let alone the questions of how many times a week and whether such personal therapy is at least throughout the training. The potential client is faced with the confusing complexity of professional labels, for example, MBACP (registered) and MBACP (accredited), psychotherapist, psychotherapeutic counsellor, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, psychodynamic psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, practitioner psychologist, clinical psychologist, counselling psychologist, and so on. There seems little in the way of help provided, particularly by referral websites, for somebody who is likely to be in distress in the first place to understand all these different titles and labels (let alone to then go into looking at choosing a modality). Furthermore , this lack of clarity over therapeutic professional labels is not just a problem for potential clients, for in my experience most health service professionals, who might advise the client, are also unlikely to be clear. I previously ran CPD programmes for general practitioners who seem to have little clue about these differences – so what chance has the general public? EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY & COUNSELLING 2023, VOL. 25, NO. 3, 219–231 https://doi.org/10.1080/13642537.2023.2241327