Comments by Tamar Ben-Barak

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  • Steve, coming from this viewpoint, what would you think about initiations that try to bring emotional support back to community members? Things like Emotional CPR or Just Listening Community?
    If you are right (which I am not entirely sure about), we need to stir away from professionalised emotional support and find “common” ways to provide it to one another.
    https://www.justlistening.com.au/

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  • Thank you for this article! It is clear and brings up many good points.

    I am not sure, however, about the necessity or wisdoms in expecting therapy trainees to undergo therapy themselves.
    Clearly, they do need to have SOME kind of process to enhance their self-awareness and work through their challenges.

    But is mandatory psychotherapy the solution?

    In my home country, where psychodynamic approach is dominant, candidates are expected to have therapy themselves. Observing the professional culture, I am sceptical this leads to good outcomes.
    More likely, I believe it leads to dogmatism and the continuing of poor professional culture. If you have therapy as a professional candidate, and you know that this is a factor in your chances to be accepted to an exclusive training program, you are likely to adopt and internalise whatever modelling your therapist offers you, with little healthy criticism of the process.

    I don’t know what is the answer for that. Perhaps mandatory and frequent supervision, plus effective reporting channels that could help the client discuss and understand their experiences in therapy.

    A friend of mine is a firm advocate for the client’s right to bring a companion to their therapy session, just like it is with medical appointments. So that therapy is not necessarily done behind closed doors.

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  • MIA gives a proper stage to critique about police use in mental health crises, which is great. It also gives space to the stories of military and police personnel who have unique issues when being traumatised at work and suffering the consequences – for example, the (unethical?) lack of medical confidentiality and the reporting channel between her treating professionals and her supervisors, as described in the blog. I think it’s fair enough.

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  • This research is nice, but it’s only Part 1 of what needs to be done.
    In Part 2, responders need to be asked to delve into the professional education programs of MH professionals (from undergraduate courses up). They should be asked to identify components of this training that facilitate the staff’s wrong and harmful behaviours and other adversities they experienced in their hospitalisation.

    We must break the wall between “consumer perspective” and “professional perspective” and give psychiatric survivors a real chance to reflect not just on their trauma, but also on what led to it, what enable it.

    Research that focuses on direct patient experience only, might tempt policy makers to change the clinical environment while neglecting its roots. Or they might decide to add this or that tiny component to the clinical education about “person centre approach” or “trauma informed care”, while ignoring the existence of trauma-generating and dehumanising concepts such as ‘schizophrenia’, ‘BPD’, ‘poor insight’ and many others.
    Trying to change the clinical practice while ignoring its rotten roots is likely to be futile.

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  • This is outrageous.
    The falsified STAR*D results have sent millions of people down an ineffective path. Moreover, they hinder recovery and remission that could have happened otherwise. They might have created increase in morbidity and mortality rather than decreasing it, due to significant side effects. The subsequent trend of widespread, long-term prescriptions of antidepressants has probably fuelled the chronicity of depression and devastating, debilitating withdrawal symptoms. In simple words, this publication helped to kill people and destroy lives.

    We need to keep pushing the truth forward. We need to keep telling and retelling it over and over again.
    Thank you, Robert. Thank you very much.

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