Contents:

• Features
  • First person

    • My journey began more than 17 years ago when my first-born daughter lost her battle against childhood cancer

  • Challenge - A risk to self and others

    • 
      Dolly is a recently qualified counsellor who has picked up some work from a transport company who saw her listing in a local directory. She is working with her client, Alan, who is an HGV driver for the firm and is having personal problems regarding the break-up of his marriage. Dolly is seeing Alan at the firm’s premises. At the third session, Alan discloses that he is drinking very heavily, perhaps as much as a litre of vodka a night and then going into work the following day, often having a drink whilst working. Dolly is horrified and consults with her supervisor who says that the implications are serious enough for Dolly to break confidentiality and discuss Alan’s situation with his employer in the first instance because it is likely that Alan is unfit to drive and, secondly, with his GP. Dolly’s supervisor cites the principle of beneficence and paragraph 14 of the guidance on good practice  (Keeping Trust) in the BACP Ethical Framework as to why she should break client confidentiality. Dolly does this and Alan’s firm and the GP both thank Dolly for her responsible attitude. However at session four, Alan arrives in a flaming temper, accusing Dolly of breaching the confidentiality she had made so much of in the first session and threatening to make a complaint to BACP. He has been laid off driving for two months by his firm who explained that the counsellor had told them of his heavy drinking, and his GP asked him about his drinking on a routine visit.

  • Bleeding hearts and forget-me-nots

    • Victims of torture are finding healing through working in the Medical Foundation's Garden Project where they are empowered to communicate and regenerate in self-chosen ways alongside their therapists

  • Ecolimia Nervosa?

    • Consumption, sources of nourishment, eating problems and ecopsychology are intimately connected

  • Transactions on the rock face

    • Nick Ray, adventure therapist and psychotherapist, works as a transactional analyst both inside the therapy room and out in the natural environment

  • Wild at heart: another side of ecopsychology

    • The wild mind is spontaneous, co-creative, self-balancing and wise. We need to access it and make friends with it if we are radically to change our behaviour towards the rest of the world

  • Beyond the medical model

    • Terry Lynch is a GP turned psychotherapist, and the author of the best-selling book, Beyond Prozac. Here he talks about what is wrong with the medical model of mental distress, and what needs to change

  • Regulation: the mapping project

    • The first small stage of the complex task of regulating the psychological therapies has been completed – with some interesting and challenging discoveries

  • A voluntary sector forum for BACP

    • Resolutions brought to the AGM do have some effect

  • Cover feature

    • There is a growing interest in adventure and wilderness therapy. For over a decade, Kaye Richards and Jenny Peel have developed practice, training and research in this area. Here, they report on the innovative and compelling ways of working offered by adventure and the outdoors

• Regulars
  • News
    • Joyriding an addiction

      • Some young people show signs of being addicted to joyriding

    • Men in prison

      • Many men who are mentally ill slip through the ‘net of care’

    • Anorexia carers

      • Carers of people with anorexia nervosa may benefit from CBT strategies

    • Mental health crisis lines

      • A joint report by the charity Rethink and the National Institute for Mental Health

    • Therapy for abuse victims

      • The annual report of the One-in-Four charity reflects a dramatic increase

    • DfES reall new adoption rules

      • In last months' therapy today news we reported that counsellors who offer servies in relation to the therapeutic needs of an adoptive child

    • ChildLine merges with NSPCC

      • From early next year, ChildLine’s free helpline is to become a distinct service within the NSPCC

    • Female sex abusers

      • A new report published by the NSPCC states that, although child abuse is typically seen as a male crime, five per cent of all sexual offences against children are carried out by women

    • Personal values and stress

      • Reflecting on meaningful values provides biological and psychological protection from the adverse effects of stress, according to psychologists from the University of California

  • Editorial

    • We spend a lot of time talking about the breakdown of relationships – in families, communities, church. Another relationship that has been in decline for a long while is that between ourselves and our natural environment

• BACP