STOP IAPT NOW

It’s good to talk, but now we need to act.

My main purpose in setting up this blog is to help expose the broken state of Clinical Psychology in the UK, both as a discipline and as a service, and to seek ways forward to rebuild both.

This is too big a task for one person to take on but thankfully I am not alone. Indeed I am late to the game. There are many other people who share my views and other sites campaigning for the same goals. Each person or site has different perspectives, based on different experiences. Each person will have different contributions to make to the campaign. Likewise the people to be influenced in order to achieve our goals are many, the BPS, the NHS, The Government, academic institutions, The Media, Charities, and the public to name a few.

The following are my suggestions for some of the components of such a campaign:

* We should make use of the new member networks to press the BPS Clinical Division that future advice to the NHS or other health services should not be based on current IAPT/NICE/CBT.

* We need to promote the value of practice based evidence.

* Many of the clinical psychologists trained in the last ten years have limited experience of psychological assessment, formulation, and interventions other than IAPT brand CBT. They also have limited exposure to the case against IAPT, both the theory and practice. We need to ensure that the training of clinical psychology practitioners at all levels includes knowledge of alternatives to IAPT brand CBT. Not only would clients get a better service, but practitioners would have greater job satisfaction.