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If a teenager goes to a state licensed therapist and tells them they want to be Superman, should the therpist be allowed to give the teen a cape and say "Sure kid! Now jump off the Empire State building and show me how you can fly"
This analogy along with the Napoleon one FTW!
Another one:
Should a therapist be able to encourage someone with body dysmorphia to continue rejecting their body at a healthy weight & instead starve themselves til they're content?
Thanks! I'm really not trying to be flip. I think part of what is being lost is that therapists are not allowed to just hang a shingle and say or do whatever they feel like saying or doing. My neighbor who is good with people can't just decide she is going to call herself a therapist. I can't just make up a treatment with no basis in fact and say it cures depression. People are absolutely allowed to believe anything they want to, I will defend that one to the death, but therapists are not allowed to make things up and sell a product/service based on what has been made up.
1) There is a tremendous difference between a purely physical trait like height and a complex internal/emotional trait like sexuality. One can be scientifically measured with a ruler, the other can not.
2) I believe that informed teens should not be *banned* from seeking therapists who are on board with their views. Teens aren't stupid, many know what they want and I think it's misguided and probably harmful to protect them from themselves like this with these types of bans. .
3) I think that if you want others to respect your thoughts, your views, your freedom to live your life than you need to do them the same courtesy.
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This has NOTHING to do with the patient. Doctors (including therapists) can not offer treatments with a basis of evidence. They certainly cannot offer treatments that are known to be harmful.
Again, if a patient goes to their doctor and says they want to self-harm, the doctor doesn't get to encourage that behavior because the patient wants it. He doesn't get to encourage delusions because the patient believes in them. The patient is irrelevant to the doctor's code of ethics and the legal system under which they operate.
Teens aren't stupid, no. But they ARE vulnerable. Many teens are in a situation where they are not seeking such therapy on their own...they are being pushed into it. Even that is not relevant.
This is about the doctors. They are not free to simply pick any half-baked, unscientific method of therapy the patient says they want. They are held to a higher standard than the patient because they are the professionals. The patient does NOT get to dictate treatment if that treatment is dangerous to their mental or physical health and the benefit is less than 1 percent success rate. In realty, the patient never gets to dictate treatment...they can suggest, but the therapist needs to be the one determining what therapy is used because they are the educated ones. If the patient doesn't like the therapy that is decided on, they can leave. This is like saying a patient should get to decide what surgical technique to use on his busted hip. He can research, ask questions, suggest, or find another doctor, but the doctor has the obligation to use the technique he or she feels is best for the situation.
This is not new. It's just being upheld and stopping one religious group from using unethical, unprofessional methods.
This has NOTHING to do with the patient. Doctors (including therapists) can not offer treatments with a basis of evidence. They certainly cannot offer treatments that are known to be harmful.
Again, if a patient goes to their doctor and says they want to self-harm, the doctor doesn't get to encourage that behavior because the patient wants it. He doesn't get to encourage delusions because the patient believes in them. The patient is irrelevant to the doctor's code of ethics and the legal system under which they operate.
Teens aren't stupid, no. But they ARE vulnerable. Many teens are in a situation where they are not seeking such therapy on their own...they are being pushed into it. Even that is not relevant.
This is about the doctors. They are not free to simply pick any half-baked, unscientific method of therapy the patient says they want. They are held to a higher standard than the patient because they are the professionals. The patient does NOT get to dictate treatment if that treatment is dangerous to their mental or physical health and the benefit is less than 1 percent success rate. In realty, the patient never gets to dictate treatment...they can suggest, but the therapist needs to be the one determining what therapy is used because they are the educated ones. If the patient doesn't like the therapy that is decided on, they can leave. This is like saying a patient should get to decide what surgical technique to use on his busted hip. He can research, ask questions, suggest, or find another doctor, but the doctor has the obligation to use the technique he or she feels is best for the situation.
This is not new. It's just being upheld and stopping one religious group from using unethical, unprofessional methods.
This.
The client always has the right to consent to the treatment or not, but not to dictate the terms. I worked with the chronically suicidal. Believe me when I tell you that most of my clients truly wanted to commit suicide (minors and adults). Part of consenting to treatment was giving up acting on those thought and urges for the 12 months of treatment. Part of my job was validating that my clients truly wanted to end their lives to escape their intolerable pain and helping them to find ways to escape that pain in an effective manner that did not involve self-injury. By the logic posited on this thread, I should have helped them to reach their goal of suicide. They were free to commit to the therapy or to not, but state law prohibited me from just blindly agreeing to what they desired at the outset of treatment. There is a huge difference between validating that someone is experiencing an emotion or holds a belief and AGREEING that the belief or emotion fits the facts of the situation. Conversely, disagreeing need not be invalidating.
1) There is a tremendous difference between a purely physical trait like height and a complex internal/emotional trait like sexuality. One can be scientifically measured with a ruler, the other can not.
Actually it looks like it can be 'scientifically measured' with a PET or fMRI brain scan now. In the past (oh say 60 years) penile plesmographs were used.
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2) I believe that informed teens should not be *banned* from seeking therapists who are on board with their views. Teens aren't stupid, many know what they want and I think it's misguided and probably harmful to protect them from themselves like this with these types of bans. .
So it's a 'yes' from you about a teen being given a Superman cape and told by a state-licensed therapist that they can now jump off a tall building and fly? Because the teen knows what they want? Even though the teen has been 'informed' that it is 'harmful' and won't work?
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3) I think that if you want others to respect your thoughts, your views, your freedom to live your life than you need to do them the same courtesy.
I respect the right of others to live their lives the way they want as long as it isn't harming others, especially children. The State has a vested interest in protecting minors from harm.
I do NOT respect the views of so called 'professionals' who have a complete disregard for evidence-based facts and who have been proven over and over to be engaged in fraud and unethical behavior - especially when it is aimed at children.
Thanks! I'm really not trying to be flip. I think part of what is being lost is that therapists are not allowed to just hang a shingle and say or do whatever they feel like saying or doing. My neighbor who is good with people can't just decide she is going to call herself a therapist. I can't just make up a treatment with no basis in fact and say it cures depression. People are absolutely allowed to believe anything they want to, I will defend that one to the death, but therapists are not allowed to make things up and sell a product/service based on what has been made up.
Telling a struggling person who wants to be ungay that they aren't for real (and this is what this ban is saying) is just as harmful as telling a homosexual person that they aren't for real, that they are making it up, that they are full of BS, that they should just get over it. Remember the dim dark ages, not so long ago, when that is exactly what the shrinks did say about homosexuality?
Telling a struggling person who wants to be ungay that they aren't for real (and this is what this ban is saying) is just as harmful as telling a homosexual person that they aren't for real, that they are making it up, that they are full of BS, that they should just get over it. Remember the dim dark ages, not so long ago, when that is exactly what the shrinks did say about homosexuality?
Different group, same stupid mistakes.
I see what you are saying, but I disagree that this is what the ban is saying. The ban is saying therapists cannot peddle an ineffective and proven to be harmful treatment to minors. No one is telling anyone that a person's experience is BS or they should just get over anything or are making anything up (I'd hate to go to the therapist who says that!). People hold their beliefs for a reason. Respecting that and agreeing that the belief is supported by fact are two different things. We wouldn't be having this conversation at all if the treatment in question had any evidence that it worked (indeed evidence points to it causing harm). A therapist cannot make someone "ungay" no matter how fervently the client desires to not be attracted to the same sex. They can help the client cope with not acting on the attraction, with the dysphoria that comes from conflicting beliefs and desires, etc.
I think you are conflating a judgment about the treatment with judgment of a person who holds the belief that the treatment should work (even though it does not). I have said several times, it is not my job to force a client to identify as gay or to tell them their beliefs are wrong. It is my job to communicate the reality of the facts as known by the current state of the art and help them make their own decisions on how to live their own lives and cope with the resultant emotions from that decision, whatever it may be.
Last edited by eastwesteastagain; 10-04-2012 at 11:12 AM..
No, it's just that you kept using my name, where a pronoun would have been easier if you knew that I was a 'she' and not a 'he'. I'm often not sure, so I use 'the poster', although it feels awkward
Telling a struggling person who wants to be ungay that they aren't for real (and this is what this ban is saying) is just as harmful as telling a homosexual person that they aren't for real, that they are making it up, that they are full of BS, that they should just get over it. Remember the dim dark ages, not so long ago, when that is exactly what the shrinks did say about homosexuality?
Different group, same stupid mistakes.
No one is telling the person they aren't for real. That would imply that their desire to not be gay isn't real, and no one is saying that. The desire is real. That doesn't make it possible to act upon. Just as a desire to fly unaided is real...that doesn't mean the patient actually can do so.
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