Contents:

• Features
  • Presenting a united front

    • With debate currently raging around issues such as CBT, the IAPT initiative and the necessity of personal therapy for therapists, one disgruntled BACP member thinks it’s time for us to present a united front and stop arguing amongst ourselves

  • The elephant in the room: counselling in the context of poverty

    • Do therapists have a role to play on the streets of our poorest areas, where unemployment is into its third generation and life is uniquely miserable?

  • The future is now

    • How might centrally driven change in the NHS impact on counselling and psychotherapy services, practice and clients across different sectors in the UK?

  • Research expertise

    • Professor Robert Burgess, one of BACP’s new vice-presidents, explains the benefit of research

  • Walking the talk

    • BACP no longer requires mandatory personal therapy as a prerequisite for accreditation. But is it appropriate for therapists to work with clients if they have not walked a similar path themselves?

  • Towards a new ethic of trust

    • Risk and uncertainty are inescapable challenges facing all therapists and clients. But are they adequately addressed in existing approaches to ethics?

  • Minding your own business

    • Thirteen key areas to concern yourself with as you launch a private practice – and tips to stop the project foundering

  • The shadow in organisations

    • Acknowledging unexpressed aspects of an organisation’s culture and ethos when working with supervisees enriches the supervision process and supports both the counsellor and the client

  • Who’s afraid of the big bad group?

    • Group therapy is exciting, economical and effective – so why don’t more people do it?

  • Cover feature

    • Are exceptional therapists born or made? Have they discovered a secret unknown to other clinicians or are their consistently superior results simply a fluke? A team of researchers in America set out to discover the elusive factor that separates the best from the rest

• Regulars
  • News
    • Target recovery

      • Mental health services need to offer people more opportunities to get their lives back and focus less on medication and symptom control, according to a policy paper published by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

    • Can meditation make you a better therapist?

      • One American study* looked at whether psychotherapists in training who worked on an inpatient psychiatric unit would do better therapy if they meditated

    • SATs successor equally damaging

      • Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, told delegates at the union’s annual conference in Torquay that SATs were responsible for poor mental health among many young people and that this could get worse

    • Kids Company funded

      • The Department of Children, Schools and Families has awarded the charity Kids Company a three-year grant of £12.7 million, which is to be spent on 400 of the most vulnerable young people, aged 14 upwards, who present complex disturbances

    • Skinny expectations in old age

      • There is a rise in the number of women in their 50s being treated for anorexia and other eating disorders

    • Skinny expectations in old age

      • There is a rise in the number of women in their 50s being treated for anorexia and other eating disorders

    • Mars and Venus myth

      • Therapists should think in terms of gender similarities instead of differences, says an American psychologist

    • Counsellors support for weight loss

      • US researchers have found that people who lost weight were more apt to keep it off if they had periodic personal chats with a counsellor rather than regularly reading a website that provides advice or getting no regular continuing assistance

    • Domestic violence success in court

      • Ten of the 23 Specialist Domestic Violence Courts achieved a successful prosecution rate of over 70 per cent, according to a review published by the Government

    • Women healing Kenya’s trauma

      • Women in Kenya are being trained in counselling skills to begin healing the rifts caused by the post-election violence in the country

  • Editorial

    • The very idea of a supershrink will be anathema to some: with its American superhero connotations of high pressure, high achievement, it epitomises values that are in so many ways opposed to the values of therapy.

  • Letters
    • Time for a sea change?

      • I have to say ‘three cheers and then some’ in response to the letters by Nick Totton, William Johnston and Paul McGahey in the March edition of therapy today

    • Whatever happened to our core conditions?

      • As I read the articles on IAPT as well as several letters relating to the growth of CBT in the March issue of therapy today, I smiled as it dawned on me that counsellors are human too

    • CBT – righting some wrongs

      • I am writing in response to the interview with Darian Leader in last month’s issue (therapy today, March 2008)

    • Why train new therapists?

      • As Sarah Browne says, ‘getting the Government to put £170 million into psychological therapies is an incredible achievement,’ (therapy today, March 2008)

    • Criteria for successful therapy?

      • I read Helen Coles’ article (‘Personal development criteria’) in the February issue of therapy today with some recognition and resignation.

    • Stifling debate not encouraging it

      • After reading the article by Helen Coles in the February edition of therapy today, I feel very disappointed that she used the space simply to re-iterate BACP accreditation policy

    • Words and labels

      • I take note of Ian Plágaro-Neill’s comment upon my use of the word ‘schizophrenic’ in my article in February’s therapy today

    • Chinese herbs – not a distraction

      • I was astounded to read in Annie Reed Henderson's article ‘Unexplained infertility’ (therapy today, February 2008)

    • Economic and moral double standards

      • In his letter ‘Need to measure value’ (therapy today, March 2008), Gavin Robinson comments, reasonably enough, that we live in a world ‘measured by money’ and asks whether we might have to ‘work with the reality and not an idealised world?’

  • Reviews
    • Therapy and the law

      • Counselling, psychotherapy and the law (2nd ed), Peter Jenkins, Sage Publications 2007, ISBN 978-1412900065 £19.99

    • Vital book for separated parents

      • Putting children first: a handbook for separated parents, Karen and Nick Woodall, Piatkus 2007, ISBN 978-0749928049 £9.99

    • Client perceptions of mental distress

      • Journeys through mental illness: client experiences and understandings of mental distress, Juliet L H Foster, Palgrave Macmillan 2007, ISBN 978-1403986269, £18.99

    • Diverse collection of essays

      • Hope and despair in narrative and family therapy: adversity, forgiveness and reconciliation, Carmel Flaskas, Imelda McCarthy,  Jim Sheehan (eds), Routledge 2007, ISBN 978-1583917695, £29.95

    • Therapy and religion

      • Psychoanalysis and religion in the 21st century: competitors or collaborators?  David M Black (ed), Routledge 2006, ISBN 978-041537944X, £21.99

    • Medical model psychosomatics

      • Psychosomatics: the uses of psychotherapy, Peter Shoenberg, Palgrave Macmillan 2007, ISBN 978-0333946510, £20.99

    • Revisiting Rogers

      • The life and work of Carl Rogers, Howard Kirschenbaum, PCCS Books 2007, ISBN 978-1898059936, £27

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• BACP
  • BACP News
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      • News from your Association

  • BACP Professional Conduct
    • Findings, decision and sanction
  • BACP Professional Standards
    • Professional standards

      • We would like to congratulate the following people on achieving their BACP accredited status

  • BACP Research
    • Research

      • News from the BACP Research department