rebuttal

This post is a response to this post, which you will probably need to read if you want to understand what I'm going on about.

I agree that counsellors/psychotherapists should not try to interfere with what doctors have prescribed for a patient. HOWEVER, perhaps the client took his counsellor's advice because he actually trusted her more than his doctor, was able to understand what she told him, and felt she respected him more. In fact, the original NZ Herald article says "However the man remained in contact with the counsellor [after he was referred somewhere else] by text message and asked her whether he should take his medication." But then, the HDC report says "Subsequently, she offered him several appointments, each of which he cancelled by text." So... yeah, not sure.

As usual this is a case of one counsellor doing something that "would provoke severe professional disapproval"(from the HDC report) and potentially making the whole profession look bad. Likewise, while this may not be the case for the doctor who wrote the post (or many others), it is my experience that doctors, 100% of the time, do not explain a prescribed medication in a way that is easily understood. Worse, they don't even try most of the time. Just "OK, here's what's 'Wrong', here's a drug to cover it up, go and get your prescription and send in the next patient while you're out there" [slight exaggeration at the end there]. It is implied that you should trust them, and in theory we should be able to. But it is an individual's body they are dealing with, and it would be nice to know exactly what is in the little white pill that we are told to pop down 1, 2 or 3 times a day with food and the things it will do to our bodies (including unsolicited side effects).

If you're a doctor, you perhaps don't think you have time to explain everything like this to a patient, and you're probably right. I'm not saying FIX the problem... because I don't know how. I'm just saying, perhaps this is a wake-up call to doctors who think they know their patients... but don't. Also, to show some respect for a patient's need to understand what you want to put into their bodies.[A whole other can of worms... are these things actually part a doctor's job, or is this beyond what a doctor is meant to do?]

It also bugs me that the post is called "Real Quackery".Quackery is a term, from my experience, that scientists use to describe things like homeopathy, chiropractic, essential oils, t'ai chi etc. which they believe are a lot of bulls***. So, this post's title implies the author thinks that counselling is 'quackery'. Now THAT is bulls***.

What do I know, I'm not a doctor... hence the reason this personal opinion is written on my personal blog rather than as a science-y rebuttal to the original Sciblog post.

Hmm, tis interesting, non?