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"How Ending 'Recovered Memory' Treatments Brought Informed Consent to Psychotherapy"

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
Reforming Mental Health Care: How Ending “Recovered Memory” Treatments Brought Informed Consent to Psychotherapy
(June 6)
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psy...brought-informed-consent#sthash.YxB89XDO.dpuf

Page 2 is here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ed-consent/page/0/2+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

Informed Consent is possibly of interest in the ME/CFS field, with regard to CBT and GET.

This article explores how change happened with recovered memory treatments.

The impression this article gives is the big factor seems to be law suits. But other factors are mentioned:

The end of the RRM-MPD epidemic was not “incomprehensible” but rather the predictable—and predicted—result of carefully planned and executed, multidisciplinary efforts to protect the fundamental human rights of vulnerable patients and families. These integrated efforts included model legislation, litigation (malpractice suits in dozens of states), regulation (multi-state licensing prosecutions), public education via international media, continuing medical-professional education, a wave of scientific research publications, Daubert-Kumho legal hearings to exclude RRM-MPD notions from courtrooms,1 and criminal prosecutions of therapists.

Jurors reported they found such therapy methods—methods clearly documented in the patient’s medical records and carefully articulated in the training materials offered by RRM-MPD proponents—to be reckless, abusive, and a violation of the patients’ fundamental human right to control treatment by informed consent.

by November 1997, the RRM-MPD therapy industry had collapsed under mounting pressure from our coordinated cluster of internationally reported legal actions.

It is essential for historians to note that in contrast to the tragic damages of the RRM-MPD epidemic, the cleansing wave of successful reform lawsuits and licensing actions resulted in historic, lasting reforms in the US mental health system. Such reforms included a new focus on empirically supported therapies,14 a treasure trove of new research on the nature of human memory, model applications of Daubert-Kumho legal hearings that excluded unreliable notions such as “repressed-recovered memories,”15 and the long overdue enforcement of informed consent protections for psychotherapy patients.

By making “failure to properly obtain informed consent” one of the key allegations in our wave of lawsuits and licensing prosecutions, we forced the mental health system to recognize, honor, and protect this fundamental human right of all health care patients
 

PennyIA

Senior Member
Messages
728
Location
Iowa
failure to properly obtain informed consent
might be useful in the cases of medical kidnappings, like with Karina Hansen - but honestly? They have consent of the appointed government guardianship...

And honestly? I believe I was given a form of GET treatment when I was at Mayo Clinic (I wasn't told that's what it was and that was before I found this site and figured out why it seemed like it helped for a bit of time until I hit my max tolerance and got told to do 'just a bit more' until I crashed...). And I gave consent - I didn't know any better.

If I understand the rules in the UK - they can refuse to do CBT and GET all they want. But they aren't offered alternatives if they do refuse it.

Sadly, unless we can prove harmful intent in pushing these treatments onto us, I doubt we'll have much 'fighting' power.
 

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
might be useful in the cases of medical kidnappings, like with Karina Hansen - but honestly? They have consent of the appointed government guardianship...

And honestly? I believe I was given a form of GET treatment when I was at Mayo Clinic (I wasn't told that's what it was and that was before I found this site and figured out why it seemed like it helped for a bit of time until I hit my max tolerance and got told to do 'just a bit more' until I crashed...). And I gave consent - I didn't know any better.

If I understand the rules in the UK - they can refuse to do CBT and GET all they want. But they aren't offered alternatives if they do refuse it.

Sadly, unless we can prove harmful intent in pushing these treatments onto us, I doubt we'll have much 'fighting' power.
Would proper informed consent not involve warning people with ME/CFS exercise therapies could make them worse? I don't think that happens much.
 

PennyIA

Senior Member
Messages
728
Location
Iowa
Would proper informed consent not involve warning people with ME/CFS exercise therapies could make them worse? I don't think that happens much.

The issue is that the people performing those therapies don't believe that the treatment can make people worse. If they believed that it was likely to make them worse, then YES they would be required to disclose it. But since they seem to believe that it's only going to make people better... well, we have to change the mindset first. (of course, if only we could change the mindset, we'd all be better off).

Right now, as part of informed consent before a surgery - they go through the most likely types of negative concequences (the things they believe could go wrong). But they can't list ALL of the potential negative outcomes - so for example, the fact that during an endoscopic procedure I started to vomit and as a result my stomach was cut. It wasn't part of the information for what could go wrong...but it wasn't like they 'believed' it would go wrong, hence they don't have to disclose.