Harmful Advice
A psychologist needs to understand, assess, and treat a patient appropriately in order to help them feel well again. However, as it currently stands, psychology is failing to achieve these requirements. Indeed, some psychologists have been fighting against the need for diagnoses at all, and some are actively encouraging their patients to engage in unhealthy thinking.
Most importantly however is a very concerning trend towards offering ‘fashionable’ ideologically-driven advice rather than evidence-based treatments. This takes a number of forms, including promotion of psychologically damaging and unvalidated belief systems such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), unconsidered validation (rather than treatment) of clients’ delusions, successful treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) being dismissed as ‘problematic’, demonisation of medical treatments, and psychological difficulties being attributed solely to ‘societal’ factors such as inequality (rather than a combination and interplay of numerous risk factors).
To read more, please click on the relevant links below:
Endorsement of Critical Theory – an ideology which actively encourages divisions, hatred and mental illness
Unconsidered recommendation of medical intervention for those suffering with gender dysphoria – it is important that psychologists are able to offer talking therapy to distressed patients, rather than being pressured into referring them for irreversible or life-changing biological treatments
Anti-psychiatry (anti-medical treatment) – while of course, we need to be cautious of over-medication, demonising all forms of medication is short-sighted and potentially dangerous
The Power Threat Meaning Framework – a framework which has no discernible therapeutic benefit for patients, and flies in the face of decades of evidence-based knowledge and research
Anti-Masculinity – men, and masculine attributes are often considered to be problematic – a belief that is not only untrue, it is also discriminatory and unhelpful