ACCESS

We are campaigning for people to have access to a wide range of counselling and psychotherapy in the NHS, and for it to be available through local community services and charities, as well as in schools and colleges. We want services to respond to the needs of local communities and to be client-led rather than provider prescribed... We also want therapists to be made available to work with community groups across a range of settings where their skills and experience can facilitate peer-led initiatives in support of mental health. This is because we also respect the capacity individuals and communities have to support each other with the empathy and emotional wisdom of their everyday lives - independently of professional services... Over the past 20 years, counselling and psychotherapy, as provided by the NHS and charities, has been reorganised into an assembly line of formulaic, ‘medical model' diagnosis and treatment, backed by misleading statistics. Since 2008, IAPT (the Improving..