Irish psychotherapy standards at risk

Sir, – I warmly welcome the letter from José Castilho and Tom Warnacke of the European Association for Psychotherapy (Letters, October 26th). They make the point clearly that being recognised by the State as a psychotherapist in Ireland is one thing, and having that qualification recognised elsewhere in Europe is quite another.

Their question to Coru, on whether its proposed standards have been compared with those of other European countries, is a fair one.

The standards as proposed for Ireland remove the mandatory requirement for personal therapy and clinical supervision, and do not set a minimum training duration. These are not academic niceties. What Coru has proposed is well below what our European counterparts regard as the foundation of safe practice.

Psychotherapists work with people who are traumatised, bereaved, suicidal or recovering from abuse. A practitioner who has not looked at their own experiences, or been closely supervised while learning, will show those limits in the consulting room, at the client’s expense.

I would ask whether any of us would be happy for a loved one to attend a therapist who had never had therapy themselves. I suspect not, and I believe the Irish public is being exposed to significant risk as a result.

Have we not had enough of the State promising to take the healing of survivors seriously, and then adopting standards that undermine it?

Regulation should raise standards, not lower the ones the profession has upheld for years while waiting for the State to act. We urge Coru and the Minister for Health to publish the comparative evidence and to engage properly with the profession before these standards take effect. – Yours, etc,

JACKY GRAINGER,

Chairperson of IAHIP (Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy),

Board director of ICP (Irish Council for Psychotherapy),

Dublin 2.