From: Stop Psychotherapy Takeover [mailto:admin@stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2015 6:46 PM
To: ‘mgoertz@rogers.com‘
Cc: ‘Sharon Ramsay’; ‘Ron Mellish’; ‘Administrator at MFT’; ‘bhorne@niagara.com‘
Subject: RE: response to your comments, Family Therapists are Hurting, Disheartened and AFRAID!
Dear Ms. Goertz,
Stop Psychotherapy Takeover Team’s mission statement has been clear (posted at http://www.stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca )… we will assist in preserving the freedoms and rights of any practitioner who feels steam-rolled. If you don’t want the updates, please use the Unsubscribe button.
We have most respectfully given voice to those who feel oppressed. We have researched our facts and made them public and will continue to do so. The public has not and never will need to be told what to think, eat or drink or who to associate with …this is Canada.
We hear the Boards of some groups saying things such as ‘it is inevitable that the CRPO will regulate us, so we may as well try to work with them”. If our forefathers had rolled over and said “it’s inevitable the Nazi’s are going to rule the world, so we may as well get a place at the table of tyranny to appear to have some say over the future’, you know where we would all be today.
The comments we shared in our update were extremely mild compared to some received. As with the spiritual care group feedback, the fear of retaliation has been prevalent and the substantial dismay at being told they have to associate with psychotherapists in order to practice was unmistakable.
Those OAMFT members who contacted us said that being advised of what is being done in their name, without first being asked what they want, is not the equivalent of an invitation to a democratically- convened event with open, transparent discussions and full disclosure of ALL the facts, including the inherent constitutional violations and the violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 14 million Ontario residents. The ‘discussions’ you allude to having been engaged in for years simply facilitated the appearance of democratic process, while dictating the outcome in advance.
The RHPA amendment violates the constitutional rights of all 14 million Ontario residents. There is no getting around that. So falling over one another to sit at the table of tyranny in order to ‘protect’ one’s title and career is doing nothing more than going along with the undermining of your neighbor’s rights and freedoms and ultimately ensuring your demise and that of your family and friends. You may prosper in the short term, not because you are more effective then anyone else, but because you forced your competition out of business with tyrannical actions… someday the cost will be heart-wrenching. All tyranny is founded on a slippery slope and as we have learned, not even the RMFT title is protected…it has been relegated to a position after Registered Psychotherapist by the College.
According to what we’ve been told, there was no ‘consultation’ with the OAMFT membership on:
(a) whether this violated anyone’s constitutional rights and freedoms;
(b) whether this was just, democratic and free of conflicts of interest of Board members. Our contacts tell us that the membership was advised that at least two OAMFT-associated members were working at a per diem rate for the Transitional Council, advancing psychologists’ agendas;
(c) whether this was necessary, when an easier route would be to become self-regulated, thereby giving those who prefer not to associate an option to work as non-registered professionals (we don’t believe you were self-regulated as RMFTs because there was no Act in place to make it so);
(d) whether this ensures that clients have a choice in practitioner and modality, as is their right. Most people don’t believe Master’s degrees and subservience to a certain doctrine of therapy is helpful to them;
(e) whether this in any way helps clients to heal themselves, or whether this health care coup is based on actual evidence or simply the propaganda of those wishing to consolidate their power and profit-making schemes. There is no risk in any person helping a family or person who wishes their guidance and advice. It is only recently in mankind’s history that we have had such interference in human-to-human healing contact. Where is the evidence that becoming a psychotherapist is something anyone should aspire to? The statistics clearly show psychotherapy is a failed approach and people increasingly prefer more humane treatment approaches;
(f) whether this is wise, considering that psychotherapists, not trained in family therapy and marriage counseling, have possibly the highest failure rate of any treatment even in what they are trained in…the fiction called the DSM, for instance. No reasonable person can understand why a successful profession such as family therapy and marriage counseling would want to hitch their wagons to statistical losers;
(g) whether OAMFT members wish to be forced to use the title Registered Psychotherapist before their earned titles, or to be forced to work under regulations that make no sense to the clients themselves.
(h) whether this is logical or desirable for OAMFT members, since there are no sub-categories of psychotherapists recognized by the CRPO and therefore family therapists and marriage counselors will inevitably end up diluted into ineffectiveness as the rules and regulations and scope of practice will increasingly force them into the DSM model of diagnosis and treatment (see section 11 of the Psychotherapy Act).
According to what was reported to us, from the beginning many did not appreciate being forced to be associated professionally with psychotherapists, let alone forced to become psychotherapists. There is NO reason to, except if your organization thought it might corner the market on family therapy and marriage counseling and by doing so eliminate those who do not wish to be members of OAMFT or CRPO.
Members understandably resent having to pay more fees for no good reason whatsoever. Imagine how they will feel when diluted into obscurity as the psychologists behind this completely take over the field as they see fit.
Disgruntled members tell us that they were led to believe that having two influential OAMFT members appointed to the Transitional Council would ensure ‘protection’ of their title. Yet – unsurprisingly – this has not happened. One cannot genuinely serve two conflicting masters — the needs of their Membership, which includes not being reduced to psychotherapists, and those of the CRPO which aims to reduce the scope of all practices to that of registered psychotherapists — at once.
In the end, it seems only the agenda of the TC has been advanced by these appointees. There are no sub-titles in the regulations, no subcategories of psychotherapists, and their earned titles are relegated to a position AFTER Registered Psychotherapist, unprotected. Even worse, the new College is not bound by any Transitional Council agreements and will be able to make any regulation it wishes to further diminish the value of what was the wonderful, safe, profession of family therapy and marriage counseling. It seems to many that becoming a registered psychotherapist is actually a demotion – for which they are paying huge fees.
OAMFT members were apparently never told that all they had to do was refuse, as a group, to accept being deemed ‘risky’ and their work unilaterally deemed a ‘psychotherapeutic technique’ in the new Dictionary of Clinical Psychology. This would have gone a long way to ensuring they were not regulated as a controlled act. But with those such as yourself, claiming that family therapy and marriage counseling are risky unless done your way, you simply bolstered the false claims of the psychologists behind this takeover that every treatment is ‘risky’ and must be ‘controlled’.
Let’s consider the glaring absences from your letter:
(a) not a single word about how much fear, distress, stress and emotional hurt you and some of your fellow past and present OAMFT higher-ups are causing and have caused others…you seem concerned only with how you feel;
(b) not a single word about the constitutional and Charter violations of all Ontarians;
(c) you have not explained why Family Therapists, who built strong practices on their own merits suddenly have to become psychotherapists, or why, when they have a choice in the first place and are not coerced, they didn’t become psychotherapists;
(d) not a single word to acknowledge that those providing what the public is increasingly seeking more of are also professionals and have also worked extremely hard. Every statement you and your colleagues make about how hard you all work and how ‘qualified’ you are to decide for the client what he/she should want, seem to deliberately imply that those in the traditional, holistic, non-psychotherapy, non-medical professions, including non-OAMFT affiliated family therapists and marriage counselors, are not professional, safe, qualified to assist another human being or even have feelings and fears of their life’s work being extinguished. The professionals you deem ‘unqualified’ have succeeded despite not having the benefit of preferential treatment from a system rigged for corporate profits and creeping credentialism at the profound expense of the clients/patients–a system whose health insurance policies ignore that these safe treatments save the taxpayer some $10-$14 Billion annually and are free-choice;
(e) not a single word about how western approaches are NOT accepted by some 80% of the world’s population and western-approach counselors and therapists have actually been asked to leave countries where they ‘volunteered’ to help after war and crises (eg. Rwanda);
(f) not a word validating the feelings of some Family Therapists who reported to us they felt the OAMFT Board was working for the TC instead of the membership, when you knew, or should have known that in fact, this was the case. You even characterize OAMFT board and committee members strictly as “self-sacrificing” volunteers when in fact some of them have been generously remunerated by CRPO.
(g) you fail to acknowledge that there is not a single Master’s Degree, psychological theory or psychological/psychotherapeutic diploma that has ever healed, cured or protected anyone… or that your ‘educational qualifications’ are not necessarily of any interest to the public who prefer those ‘educated’ according to Universal Laws instead of self-aggrandizing human concepts;
(h) you have not mentioned that non-psychotherapy, non-psychological, non-psychiatric treatments were around long before the western approach arrived and they worked well to get mankind through two great wars and a great depression and should be respected as equal;
While you suggest that you have all worked ‘so hard’ and have deemed one another as ‘qualified’ to treat others — and we do not argue with your views of yourselves — you have not considered that no matter what wrapping paper you surround yourselves with, the package is still no more and no less valued in this Universe than any other and the Constitution ensures that you are reminded of that.
We find it curious that your claim that you and your colleagues have struggled “valiantly” to garner opinions and input from members on this issue is glaringly not evidenced in the many OAMFT communications – going as far back as 2008 – that we have examined.
We understand your feelings:
- you do not like being contradicted or criticized, while you criticize other professionals;
- you do not like being forced to consider that others do not necessarily agree that you are in the best position to tell them what is right and just for them.
- you do not like the public getting to choose their own practitioners and methodology – because in a level playing field, they may not choose you after all and they don’t really care whether you have a Master’s degree;
- you do consider it acceptable to dismiss other people’s feelings out-of-hand, but demand that yours be validated and protected;
- you feel that you should be permitted to force people to accept your view that your ‘credentials’ and ‘views’ are superior to those of other professionals and therefore only you can protect the public from its itself;
- you are so uncomfortable about being challenged that you completely ignore the fact that the practitioners freely chosen by the public are professionals as well, with training in their own fields, having put time, energy, money , hard work and great love and passion into their treatments…all of which are at least the equal of yours, especially since those practitioners have not been indoctrinated into a rigid, inflexible way of thinking and treating;
- you feel that you need not do independent, in-depth research to learn if the claims by the psychotherapists and psychologists you hold in such high esteem are remotely true. Rather, you seem to feel that holding onto the position that you know what is best for everyone is sufficient.
Ms. Goertz, we are not the ones misleading the public; we are not the ones protecting ‘titles’ at the expense of everyone’s freedoms, when standing up to psychologist/psychotherapist’s tyranny would be more honorable; we are not the ones whose actions would have outlawed the work of Jesus, Miguel Ruiz, Mother Theresa and countless others who have helped millions. Ironically enough, we are not the ones that the public needs protection from!
We believe that many people who are assisting in this takeover are good people who have not thought through the consequences to others of their behavior…deprivation of livelihoods, positioning themselves as superior to others, forcing people to accept that somehow a Master’s degree is important to human life beyond the illusion of superiority it provides the holder. Most especially, good people often do not consider it important that others may be forced to accept a demotion that is totally unnecessary and protects only the careers and earnings of those in power.
Regulation does not improve lives… Please look at the statistics …they show that the more regulated health care has become, the more deadly. Conventional medical treatment (Iatrogenic disease) has become the #1 killer and disabler of Canadians.
FACTS:
- It is a myth that the medical/pharmaceutical adherents are best positioned to decide who is qualified to assist other human beings. Statistics show that professionals in this group commit suicide at twice the rate of the general population and suffer twice the rates of mental illness. Worse, statistics show that 42% of those who commit suicide were in treatment with ‘mental health professionals’ at the time they did so. Thus, it is vitally important that unrestricted options are available to those who do not like these odds.
- It is a myth that one is not qualified to help another unless they are a registered psychotherapist, have a Master’s degree, or belong to the OAMFT or CRPO.
It is a serious myth that psychotherapy is a successful approach to helping others. This fact is not only borne out by the statistics, but borne out by the fact that after seeing these professionals, people search for options and pay out-of-pocket for them. Furthermore, history is replete with examples where psychotherapeutic approaches, and the licensed professionals who have used them, have caused great harm to clients. Drugs, electroshock, lobotomy, fictitious diagnoses, false memories, to name a few.
The results of independent studies by the Fraser Institute and other research facilities have shown that an increasingly large share of the public freely chooses to pay out-of-pocket to the tune of some $14 billion annually on other options, with the expenditures on non–medical approaches doubling every ten years. No one has been reported to have been harmed or killed by therapists, counselors, traditional, holistic, energy and spiritual care practitioners who were unlicensed and unregulated (Fraser Institute studies).
When people circle their wagons in any profession and claim the public really cannot do without them, one can be sure that those professionals are insecure and worried that if the playing field were level, the public would not choose them and their practices would fail. That is what this RHPA, Psychotherapy and Psychology legislation is about. As the public returns to safe, effective therapies and approaches of the past — some of which are just plain human-to-human empathic healing techniques passed down through the generations — licensed professionals and those who invested in the ‘educational’ system are grasping at ways to save their practices by forcing the public to accept them.
We hope you will read the attached excellent paper “Tyranny” by Jon Roland of the Constitution Society with a view to considering some honest soul-searching. Not a single family therapist should consider becoming a registered psychotherapist, let alone be forced to become one, when all they have to do is push-back against such undemocratic regulation. The tactic used to force Ontario residents and practitioners to accept the unacceptable in a democracy is well laid out in the Boland’s paper, attached. Statements in italics are ours for emphasis.
Conclusion:
We will continue to publish any information that is vital for the public’s safety. The public needs to know that the future family therapist who is treating them will actually be a psychotherapist. They will be ‘treated’ according to rules and regulations made without public consultation and since psychotherapy adheres to the medical model, they can also expect to be diagnosed. We will educate the public to demand full disclosure as to whether the family therapist or marriage counselor or spiritual counselor is a registered psychotherapist as is required by the Health Care Consent Act and urge them to avoid being dragged into ‘mental health’ treatments.
ONLY the client has the right to choose their treatment. It is not acceptable that the field of human health be terrorized by those who feel superior to others.
The College can exist. However, it is not a reality that it should or will rule over everyone’s lives and tell everyone what they can think, do, eat, drink or who to associate with. The Constitution was here long before the College and you need to remember that you are a free person until you give up your freedom through apathy, precisely because millions of men and women gave their lives to obtain this freedom. If you choose to enslave yourself that is your business…but it is our business when you try to enslave the rest of us.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to explain our sadness, disappointment and feelings of being disrespected as human beings and demeaned as professionals who have worked extremely hard and proven ourselves beyond all odds to those who matter…our clients.
Most sincerely,
~The Stop Psychotherapy Takeover team
…………….
LETTER FROM FORMER PRESIDENT OF ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY THERAPISTS ABOUT SPT NEWSLETTER:
From: mgoertz@rogers.com [mailto:mgoertz@rogers.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2015 12:43 PM
To: admin@stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca
Cc: Sharon Ramsay; Ron Mellish; Administrator at MFT
Subject: Re: Family Therapists are Hurting, Disheartened and AFRAID!
Dear Psychotherapy Takeover Team
Thank you for including me in your missive, which looks like it may have accessed OAMFT’s membership list for dissemination…I extend a friendly caution here regarding privacy legislation which might be noteworthy. I needed to read through your letter a couple of times to ensure that I hadn’t missed something or hadn’t misunderstood some of what you were saying. Accuracy is essential to respectful, effective dialogue isn’t it?
I must admit that my first reaction was surprise, followed closely by annoyance, before settling in on sadness. A goodly number of us involved with OAMFT over the years have invested thousands of volunteer hours, in good faith, to help shape this new credentialing body which would ensure that the public receives safe and effective care. We were committed to ensuring that OAMFT, and our members, would have a voice at the table as both participants and as observers. I believe that you would have been invited to join us to listen, learn, lobby and engage in an exercise that, while frustrating at times, ultimately did ensure that RMFTs were present and accountable. The title, RMFT was indeed secured through tireless and successful lobbying of the College’s Transitional Council for its protection, and your benefit.
The College, while not perfect either in either scope or mandate, nevertheless does represent the reality of a regulated mental health care future. As you may know, Canada as a whole and Ontario specifically are somewhat behind the norm globally in bringing this into practice. To be fair and accurate, those voices from the OAMFT membership that wanted to participate in this process, were given many opportunities to be heard. It was a struggle to engage a portion of our membership, to garner their opinions and input, and yet we continue to valiantly try, through such means as regional town hall meetings, Skype and telephone conversations, email missives and information seminars which have occurred annually for many years, in conjunction with our AGM. I must apologize if somehow, with all of that activity, we managed to miss your voices, or you didn’t feel comfortable raising them at the time. I think that we can agree that engagement by as many constituents as possible is foundational to shaping and sustaining a civilized society grounded in a democratic context.
My sadness is also tinged with a bit of defensiveness and even feeling that I need to be protective regarding your comments which, in places, would appear to besmudge the motivation and even the character of the fine men and women on the OAMFT board and committees who have served you, the membership, again in a self-sacrificing volunteer capacity, over these many years with minimal support and or appreciation. As a member of that group, whose service came from a good heart and a desire to showcase the important work of RMFTs, I must tell you that I feel disrespected and maligned by this radically uninformed attack.
As committed professionals who seek collaboration, restitution and peace in our life’s work and our own daily living, might I humbly suggest that going forward we share our differences in open and respectful ways, becoming stronger as people and as a profession through a process that is both honouring and balanced.
Thank you,
Marion Goertz
2010-2011 OAMFT President
……….
STOP PSYCHOTHERAPY TAKEOVER NEWSLETTER
Feb 3, 2015, at 8:51 PM, Stop Psychotherapy Takeover Team <admin@stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca> wrote :
Dear Marion,
We have heard from several family therapists and marriage counselors who express sadness and extreme disappointment at being forced to join the new College of Registered Psychotherapists (CRPO) in order to continue earning their livelihoods.
Before sharing a selection of their powerful comments we ask that you seriously consider contributing to our effort to protect our rights and freedoms to freely choose our treatment and practitioner. To do so, please click the Donate button at www.StopPsychotherapyTakeover.ca. Please note that if you donate at the Change.org petition site your donation goes to the host of the Petition site, not the legal effort.
WE NEED YOUR CONTRIBUTION NOW TO KEEP UP THE LEGAL PUSHBACK AGAINST TYRANNY.
Callers have told us that to continue practicing as family therapists and marriage counselors, Ontario Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (OAMFT) members have been told do something that they feel is neither justified nor necessary – pay additional fees and submit to governance by an organization that lacks the appropriate expertise in family therapy and many of the other treatments it seeks to takeover.
Some say they feel bullied into accepting OAMFT Board dictates and have sent us the latest OAMFT newsletter. In it, the Chair of OAMFT’s Legislation Committee updated members on the progression of the new college (CRPO) and advised members to put their name on the college’s contact list. He neither offered nor encouraged the slightest discussion on whether joining the College is truly in the best interests of OAMFT members or the public. Our contacts have complained that this is typical of OAMFT’s leadership.
Complainant ‘Peter’ wrote: “The problem is that OAMFT is not fighting back for the rights of Registered Family Therapists … When I connected with my MP about my concerns with CRPO [takeover], his office contacted OAMFT, and the person who answered the phone told him that OAMFT was supporting CRPO [takeover] because “Family Therapist” isn’t a protected name. That is misleading because “Registered Family Therapist” certainly is a protected title…
I’m concerned about the lack of due process and consultation from the OAMFT Board with the members they are supposed to be representing. At no time have the members been asked what OAMFT’s position should be on being forced to join the College in order to keep practicing as a Registered Family Therapist. The OAMFT President has been asked directly to connect with the membership and allow members the option of a vote on whether Registered Family Therapists should be forced to join in order to practice in Ontario. She has not done so or even called back after promising to do so …”
Marriage Counselor ‘Susan’ expressed her dismay this way: I” believe that the lack of consultation with the membership by OAMFT leadership and the close relationship the OAMFT Board appears to have with the Transitional Council of CRPO may have created a climate of fear for the OAMFT membership. I think that there are enough Dual Relationship [conflict] concerns to keep OAMFT members from protesting for fear of being kept from practicing in Ontario if the new College is proclaimed… OAMFT leadership appears to be representing CRPO more than OAMFT [members].”
And finally, Mel, a 25-year veteran of family counseling boasting a healthy practice: “I do not think that the majority of OAMFT’s 900 members believe that we should be forced to join CRPO in order to practice as a Registered Family Therapist…. But being forced to pay an additional $600 plus a year on top of their current AAMFT/OAMFT fees in order to be governed by people who do not have a background in Family Therapy is something most would object to if they were informed that they could have the choice to protest without fear of retaliation. It is disturbing that we have not been offered this choice, particularly given the transparent and collaborative communication that Family Therapists are trained in and known for.”
Why should all this be important to us? Because:
(a) there are no sub-categories of registered psychotherapists at the CRPO and therefore all will be forced to use the same restrictive, oppressive medical/ pharmaceutical regulations Ontarians are seeking to avoid when opting for natural treatments.
(b) as family therapy and marriage counseling are brought under the banner of a ‘controlled act’, it means that no unregistered practitioners can offer families the benefit of their wisdom, knowledge and experience.
There seem to be contradictions: the OAMFT Board says it’s necessary to become a registered psychotherapist to protect the already protected title of ‘Registered Family Therapist”. The CRPO, on the other hand, suggests the public needs their protection from therapists of all sorts. Then there is the stated purpose of the RPHA legislation … to regulate ‘risky’ treatments. Do you know anyone who has died or been hurt by family therapy? By marriage counseling? Will the public be harmed if the titles are not ‘protected’. It seems that the takeover lords can’t keep their stories straight. And it seems even clearer who is being protected by this takeover…and it’s not the public.
Some other comments from family therapists/marriage counselors:
(a) “I feel I’m being forced to agree to the takeover and suppression of natural, traditional, holistic, energy and spiritual care treatments that millions prefer over the medical approaches…like guilt by association.”
(b) “we are NOT risky and therefore in need of regulation by psychotherapists who know little to nothing about what we do.”
(c) “…once proclaimed, the College will make rules and regulations without public consultation, affecting me and my clients very detrimentally.”
(d) “I’ve been a successful practitioner for 22 years. I have no Master’s Degree or the equivalent, so I’m extremely distressed at all this takeover of our profession. ONLY the public should decide who gets to practice. For sure I’ll be targeted if I speak out.”
(e) “…we are being forced to join an organization that will have unlimited power to make regulations and rules that will harm many others… I am sickened by the fact that I am getting pulled into a dictatorship over others.”
(f) “…this is really scary. The new College has our own Board turned against us, ruling us like our opinions don’t matter! I built my marriage counseling practice through sheer hard work and now that will be destroyed because my clients won’t be interested in seeing a psychotherapist and all they stand for…”
The RHPA ‘controlled act’ has zero to do with protecting the public. It is a perfect vehicle for eliminating competition and taking control of our minds and money by allowing only certain ‘professionals’ to engage in treatments. Professional lobbyists have hoodwinked the public and the government into believing that effective and safe treatments are suddenly in need of regulation.
If you disagree with psychologist and psychotherapist claims that only they are ‘qualified’ to assist other human beings with the bumps and bruises of life, then please consider financially supporting our continuing effort to convince the Ontario Government to protect our inalienable constitutional rights, freedoms and liberties.
Please donate NOW online at www.stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca , where you will also find important information. And please share the Stop Psychotherapy Takeover petition, found here. Thank you!
Don’t miss out on Important Updates! Click here to join our email list:
