The media are missing the point about Derek Draper and psychotherapy

I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for Derek Draper.  He has now been chained to the stone slab of public opinion by the online and on paper media eager to hail the rise of political blogging with a blood sacrifice as testament to its power.  While I stand by every word I have written about Derek Draper’s fitness to practice psychotherapy with respect to misrepresentation of his qualifications, his poorly researched articles and his public conduct I also feel that the media are behaving irresponsibly in their approach to this issue and mental health therapies in general.

In the past I have hinted at disapproval for the many political bloggers who smear Gordon Brown with allegations about his mental health and behaviour, I should make this more explicit.  When people like Guido Fawkes or Janet Daley speculate about the mental state of the prime minister it is worth bearing in mind, as Guido says “this is not a professional judgement”, in other words they do not know what they are talking about, have no conclusive evidence and their arguments can be considered to lack credibility.  And, as Anthony Cox points out, smearing political opponents as mentally ill is not a particularly new phenomenon and those that make such claims typically argue from a position of political partisanship, a misplaced confidence in their own objectivity or a combination of both.  I regard the opinions of Guido and Daley on mental health as barely worth a response.

Derek Draper, like another so called psychotherapist, is of course another matter, he claims to be a practicing psychotherapist, and as someone who has been quite open about a previous breakdown would be expected to be sympathetic to the appropriate portrayal of mental health in the media.  That he considers it allegations of poor mental health an acceptable smear, and of a politician’s wife who is independent of her husbands political activity, is the primary reason why he should not be a psychotherapist.  What Draper should have done is to use his experience of a breakdown and his credentials as a psychotherapist to attack the tendency in the media to use allegations of mental health problems as an acceptable slur.  But he didn’t.  I would speculate that this is because he comes out of a political and media culture that is less concerned about factually presented evidence and informed opinion than in narratives told by headlines and personal attacks masquerading as intelligent thought.

This culture has resulted in the following compaint from Dr Petra Boynton about the stupid and irrelevant comments that some journalists were trying to get from her with respect to Derek Draper:

One journalist asked me to “dish the dirt” on Mr Draper as a “fellow therapist”. I am not a therapist and I have no dirt to dish. I only have concerns over fitness to practice.

Another asked me if I would “analyse Derek Draper’s personality”. Which is ironic given my main complaint about this case is the setting up of case studies as a means of putting down other people. Besides, I don’t do analysis of case studies or celebrities – it’s unethical and it’s one of the reasons I’ve been complaining about this current smear scandal.

It is a shame the media are more interested in prolonging the suffering of their blood sacrifice than real and important ethical and regulatory issues.  Remember Draper is just one of 38,000 or so psychotherapists and counsellors, belonging to one of 34 professional organisations and trained on one of 570 different courses, 2/3 of which not recognised by a professional body.  There is little effective regulation of Draper’s profession, but this isn’t a fact reported much in the media, instead they prefer to solicit opinion from individuals keener to submit arguments to the lowest common denominator review of journalistic opinion rather than face the scrutiny of ones peers, or use a one year MA to diagnose, from a distance, the mental health of a man they have never met.

The media may consider regulation a boring issue worthy of little discussion but there are 38,000 people out there in a position of responsibility over vulnerable individuals whose actions are largely without scrutiny.  I am not implying that all 38,000 are all dodgy but when a professional organisation representing psychotherapists puts out a press release with the following quote it does suggest that there is an urgent need to publicise this issue

Peter Fonagy, professor of psychoanalysis at University College London, says: “Most practitioners have come across individuals who have been inappropriately treated by fellow therapists. This kind of action must not be allowed to undermine public confidence in psychotherapy at a time when evidence increasingly clearly shows that therapy and counselling are among the most effective treatments for psychological disorder and are rapidly growing in popularity. We now need a transparent and independent system which allows clients’ voices to be heard if they feel their therapy has been inadequate or inappropriate.”

It would be nice if the media expressed concern about the scrutiny of 38,000 people working with vulnerable individuals rather than just the activities of one therapist.