Many of us had held out hopes that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) might be the one remaining bastion against activism. Unfortunately, this seems less and less likely. In a recent article, Nick Wallis (who exposed the UK Post Office scandal) lays out the ways in which the main CBT UK professional body – The British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) – has become corrupted by activism. Concerned BABCP members, including CTA director, Carole Sherwood, are quoted extensively.
Wallis covers the BABCP’s proposed new professional standards “requiring its therapists to ‘actively promote inclusion’ during therapy sessions and ‘ensure that any discriminatory attitudes and behaviours are challenged’ when expressed by patients.” Opponents to these new standards argue that these standards effectively shift clinical practice away from scientific principles to political activism – the goal of practice now being to ensure compliance with a progressive worldview. This is no longer therapy as traditionally understood but instead more like a form of ‘identity practice’.
Wallis also considers other indications that the BABCP is on an activist driven path such as the recent issue of guidance for therapists dealing with “climate distress” “The document included a BABCP statement telling its members ‘ we are in a climate and ecological emergency’ and urging them to ‘take action on climate change. Whether this is within management, leadership, research, training or the clinic’.” In addition, members are strongly urged to include pronouns in their signatures, and supporting references are made to trans-activist organisations such as the discredited Mermaids.
We urge viewers to read Wallis’s original piece here. Although, we at CTA have flagged up hopeful signs that academic literature is beginning to contend with the threats of ideological capture of CBT (see news about a recent special issue), it is the professional bodies that set the standards for practice. Unfortunately, the BABCP wants its members to practice thought reform not therapy.
And, finally, once again we note that the voices of senior CBT practitioners and academics in the UK are almost completely absent from this debate.
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