Before I get going, I thought parlous meant “terrible, precarious, fragile, awful” but I just checked and according to the Free Online Dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/parlous) it means “perilous, dangerous” – so how appropriate is that!
Well during the early to mid-90s I was commisioned by the Home Office to design and deliver training primarily for Forensic Psychologists working in the Prison Service. Out of this came the Diploma in Post-traumatic Stress Counselling – an accredited competence-based award foir mental health and counselling professionals. Trauma training was a huge part of my work not only within the Home Office but for a wide range of groups ranging from the Trauma Teams in Belfast, International Crisis Aid Organisations, Victims Support, Local Authority Disaster Management Teams, the Emergency Sertvices, the Armed Forces – the list goes on. Nottingham Trent University also had an M.Sc in Trauma Management which I believe was well received. It looked like, for once we’d be ready for the next disaster. The American Psychological Asscociation had an amazingly active and vibrant Traumatic-Stress Forum and new ideas and treatments were being developed at an amazing speed.
Although PTSD may be narrowly defined, trauma underpins so much of mental ill health. Somehow, however, over the past ten years trauma training has become almost non existent. The demand is there – I am an continuously receiveing enquiries from individual practitioners about how they might access the training – but there is nowhere for them toi go. The ESTSS has an certificated scheme – but it requires you to attend relevant training gain points towards their award. The trouble is that for most people there is no relevant training available.
How did we get into this “Parlous” (really dangerous if you think that most mental health professionals have no specific trauma training) state of affairs? To me it’s quite clear. Money was moving into the field because employers were concerned about litigation and lawyers were rubbing their hands with glee. I remember being told that every police sergeant had to be trained to be a Critical Incident Stress Debriefer and that debriefings were mandatory following major incidents in the emergency services.
Then research (I’m in a hotel room right now, but when I get back, I’ll give you the references) that actually said “if you force someone to go through a debriefing in front of their colleagues soon after the incident with a debriefer who is not a trained mental health professional, this can have adverse affect” – that is not a quote, but my precis of what the research was saying. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. However, how it was reported, repeatedly in the press was “trauma counselling makes you worse rather than better” – again my precis but the headlines were worse than that!
Obviously employers became scared and pulled back. Better to do nothing than risk being seen as making things worse. Training and research lost all funding and no-one put up a fight. A vacuum was left with nothing to fill it. It rermains that way today. The “power therapies” (EMDR, TFT, EFT, VKD – alphabet soup therapies) tried to fill the void with huge promises, but have since receded.
So if you want to become a trauma therapist, where do you go? Well I hope some one reading this has an answer, because right now, in the UK at least, it seems that there is nowhere.
Filed under: Training, Trauma, CISD, Debriefing, Disaster, EMDR, PTSD, Training, Trauma
