Therapy Thieves

Acting on what started as a hunch Dr. Francis Martin has cataloged well over 20000 distinct approaches to counseling and psychotherapy that are advertised on the webpages of licensed practicing mental health providers. No doubt some portion of them are harmful but the sheer volume of advertised practices and techniques often with names deceptively similar to actual evidence-based practices should be cause for concern among all stakeholders in the helping professions - from educators and researchers to policy makers and insurance companies and especially consumers. <p/>Based on this significant original study and drawing from other research and supports Therapy Thieves describes a near-universal crisis in the field and recommends ways to rescue mental health care from itself. The crisis is caused by declining competence among counselors and psychotherapists who have failed to regulate themselves and who therefore deliver inadequate - if not harmful - services. In presenting a simple yet powerful indictment of the field Dr. Martin advocates for major reforms in several areas of mental health care including how prospective licensees are trained supervised and licensed a major reworking of professional ethics and the need to establish regulations for mental health care providers. In short the book calls for major specific and urgently needed reforms.<br>