UKCP is launching a campaign on the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's (NICE) clinical guidelines.

NICE produces guidelines that determine what therapies are prescribed in the NHS. They inform the public, and guide funding decisions - for example on Employee Assistance Programmes, council-funded programmes and volunteer agencies will act on them.

NICE's guidelines are produced without consultation of relevant psychotherapy groups and psychotherapy research experts. Its guideline production process uses an overly medicalised perspective on emotional distress and treats psychotherapy as if it were a drug for research purposes. It also relies on costly RCT-based research ignoring other kinds of research evidence which would widen patient choice.

As a result, its guidelines are leading to a serious reduction in patient choice.

We have commissioned a telling critique of the NICE guidelines from our Research Unit at Roehampton University. You can find download paper here.

We are asking members to write to their MPs and offer a draft email. Our aim is to get our concerns higher up the Department of Health's agenda.

If you get a response from your MP, contact us right away:andrew@andrewsamuels.net and david.pink@ukcp.org.uk. If you have any questions about this campaign do get in touch.

We sincerely hope that all members will do this - it is enthusiastically backed by the Board.

Best wishes

Source: UK COUNCIL FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY 

8 June 2011

http://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/nice_under_scrutiny.html