Family Therapy: Are UK Health Policy Makers Bonkers?
When Alice left here a month back she left a copy of ‘Country Living’ in which I found an advert for a denture fixative. The advert featured an apple with a bite taken from each side. Who is wearing the dentures it asks?
In Britain, for forty or so years, a huge group of committed professionals have been applying themselves to helping people manage problems associated with relationships. I am not referring to ‘Marriage Guidance’, which I’m sure does excellent work, but to Family Therapists.
Family therapy can provide effective help to a family that has problems with: the elderly, various forms of disability, chronic illness, mental illness, some forms of delinquency, eating disorders and much, much more. For example Family Therapy services frequently offer consultations to other agencies such as social services departments, whose personnel no longer are trained to offer counseling help to people.
Your local service, however, is coming under pressure and most likely will disappear before you know it. Many psychotherapy posts were axed in the Greater Manchester area last year. The sole therapy that wins official approval seems to be Cognitive Behavior Therapy, [CBT], which is highly effective at changing people’s thought patterns but this is little reason to think it helps relationships problems.
This really makes me mad! There’s lots of evidence that Family Therapy is effective but probably more recent studies that show what CBT can do. The point is though that, in addition to using very different techniques, they largely impact different kinds of problem. From the ways in which policy makers are allocating funds, however, you would think that the two disciplines were being compared on the basis of those experiencing similar difficulties and CBT had come out as more effective.
It hasn’t, yet in all probability you will lose your local Family Therapy services unless more is done to recognize this important work.
When I saw the apple with the two bites I thought about how two very different psychotherapy services are attempting to access the same budget. I considered how when we think of dentures we associate them with elderly people who have seen better health. And then I considered that people can lose their teeth for other reasons, such as unfortunate accidents.
What has happened to Family Therapy hasn’t occurred by accident. It’s happened because from the first CBT had a unified policy toward evidence based research. In the coming months and years Family Therapy will fight back by conducting even more research; by raising its public profile; and of course by continuing to offer excellent value and services to the public.
