Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
What I am saying is that currently there are no known effective treatments for pedophilia. Period.
There is no known effective cure for the condition.
There is also no treatment that is 100% effective for all pedophiles.
The same statements, of course, are true of alcoholics. That does not mean that there are no treatment options, or that those options will be effective for no one.
There is no known effective cure for the condition.
There is also no treatment that is 100% effective for all pedophiles.
The same statements, of course, are true of alcoholics. That does not mean that there are no treatment options, or that those options will be effective for no one.
We don't talk about cures for mental illness, we talk about treatments that in RCTs have demonstrated a significant level of effectiveness and efficacy.
There are no known effective treatments for pedophilia. In other words, there are no treatments for pedophilia that have demonstrated enough consistent reduction in symptoms and improvement of functioning (as compared to patients receiving a different treatment or no treatment) to consider the treatment effective and efficacious by scientific standards. That doesn't mean there will never be effective treatments, just that there are not any at present. As I've stated earlier, I'm all for finding treatments that work, by scientific standards, in order to prevent the creation of more victims.
Even crystal therapy and palmistry have a few adherents who say they work for a few people's problems. Please stop putting words in my mouth.
Oh, and to clarify, there are several treatments for alcohol dependence that have demonstrated effectiveness, according to the scientific standards we've been discussing. So the comparison doesn't work.
Finally, there is no such thing as an effective and efficacious treatment that works for 100% of patients with X diagnosis. That's not the standard.
We don't talk about cures for mental illness, we talk about treatments that in RCTs have demonstrated a significant level of effectiveness and efficacy.
There are no known effective treatments for pedophilia. In other words, there are no treatments for pedophilia that have demonstrated enough consistent reduction in symptoms and improvement of functioning (as compared to patients receiving a different treatment or no treatment) to consider the treatment effective and efficacious by scientific standards. That doesn't mean there will never be effective treatments, just that there are not any at present. As I've stated earlier, I'm all for finding treatments that work, by scientific standards, in order to prevent the creation of more victims.
There are two different standards of effectiveness that you are not distinguishing from one another. One is the possible "effective treatment" of the condition of pedophilia; the other is a lack of offense or reoffense. As citizens and parents, the latter is the one we chiefly need to be concerned with. And there are treatment options that reduce the risk of reoffense.
And what do you make of the attached link to the "1972 Gay Rights Platform" apparently created at the National Coalition of Gay Organizations Convention held in Chicago in 1972; a platform in which item #7 at the state level, calls for "repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent" ???
Did you actually research this platform topic? The point was not to make child molestation legal (yuck!) but to make the age of consent for opposite sex sexaul activity and same sex sexual activity the same. Nice try but no.
There are two different standards of effectiveness that you are not distinguishing from one another. One is the possible "effective treatment" of the condition of pedophilia; the other is a lack of offense or reoffense. As citizens and parents, the latter is the one we chiefly need to be concerned with. And there are treatment options that reduce the risk of reoffense.
And it seems you are having difficulty with the concept of effectiveness as it applies to psychological treatment. I am using it in that context, not the lay person's context.
Reducing risk of reoffense, while absolutely a fantastic goal, does not make a treatment effective or efficacious by psychological treatment standards. It is disinegenuous to claim there are effective (by scientific standards) treatments when what you are referring to are treatments that may reduce some risk of reoffense in the small population studied. Furthermore, reducing risk and reducing risk to a clinically significant level are two different things. Yes, decreasing likelihood of offense or reoffense is a good - however, if it does not decrease likelihood enough to reliably prevent offenses in a significant portion of the patients treated, it doesn't have much clinical utility. For example, if 1/20 people receiving a treatment don't reoffend, well, yes it is great that the one person did not; that does not make the treatment effective or even necessarily related to the lack of reoffense.
We can agree that reducing risk of offense (or reoffense) is a huge concern in a pragmatic sense. Prevention is my foremost concern. I would prefer treatments that can prevent offenses from occurring in the first place. When we begin to address re-offending, these are people who have committed a crime and have already ruined at least one child's life. This becomes an issue for the criminal justice system and begins to move out of my area of expertise. In my personal opinion, increasing the severity of punishment for offenses committed is warranted in that case.
My major reason for posting on this thread is to clarify the misconceptions being tossed around by both sides of the argument regarding mental health treatment and the mental health treatment providers community.
And it seems you are having difficulty with the concept of effectiveness as it applies to psychological treatment. I am using it in that context, not the lay person's context.
I am choosing to limit my comments to the lay person's context, since it is actual offenses and not bad thoughts that drive public concern and public debate.
I am choosing to limit my comments to the lay person's context, since it is actual offenses and not bad thoughts that drive public concern and public debate.
Sadly, if you choose to make statements about the abundance of effective treatments for pedophilia, you tread into the land of scientific effectiveness, whether you intend to or not.
And for a lay person's perspective you can translate the above to "what you claim about treatment is not accurately supported by science at this time."
Sadly, if you choose to make statements about the abundance of effective treatments for pedophilia, you tread into the land of scientific effectiveness, whether you intend to or not.
To clarify: If anyone wants to talk about treatments that work regardless of diagnosis, whether scientifically effective or functionally effective, they had better be able to support their statements with evidence. The evidence does not support your claims about effective treatments for pedophilia, scientifically or functionally.
And incidentally, policy decisions looking at prevention are made all of the time (suicide comes to mind) without referencing "thought crimes." They frequently rely, at least in part, on the accumulation of credible scientific support. So perhaps you should consider expanding your comments to what is scientifically effective.
“The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of the offender’s emotional state, to think of him as thinking of his emotional state, [and] to empathize and sympathize,” Reisman said. “You don’t change the nation in one fell swoop; you have to change it by conditioning. The aim is to get them [pedophiles] out of prison.”
Yeah who cares about the victims. What about the poor offender's. We have to empathize with them. I say just kill em and be done with it. Not in the minds of these nutjobs. Hell Obama's school czar was a supporter of NAMBLA. How long until being a pedophile becomes the norm in this society and if you don't agree you must be racist?
As much as I hate child abuse, killing such offenders is ridiculous. If you kill them, you would have to kill all kinds of other offenders as well, such as rapists.
There is also the problem that for whatever reason some children falsely claim to have been abused, which can destroy people's careers and families. In many of those cases it is not possible to prove beyond any doubt the accused is really guilty.
Call it liberal or progressive, it would make more sense to find out why there is so much pedophilia in the first place
It is a difficult topic, with a lot of taboos etc.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
