Is there really no one who oversees counsellors in the UK?

Have you never met a vindictive individual, @unicornsandstardust ?

In the days when I was attending disability conferences I heard some awful stories about medical professionals who got nasty when vulnerable clients said 'no' to them. Including one woman with Celebral Palsy, highly intelligent, who was very nearly forced into being sterilised because she wanted a baby (she was a great mum).

People with mental health issues are twice vulnerable. Their illness can mean they misunderstand. But precisely because of that illness they can also be bullied and victimised. It's well known by the good mental health professionals.

Just how can you be quite so arrogantly confident that "no one punished her by proxy"?

Because it's happened to others, and if you get more experience in the field, you'll realise it.

I know a man who was involved romantically with a family member of mine. Turned out to be an attempted romance fraud and he’d lied about everything. He said he had millions in the bank he couldn’t access currently but promised to pay her back £50k if she gave it to him etc. luckily the relationship ended before she gave him any money but he was close to moving in with her. He had lied about his background/career and it turned out he’d had a series of low-skilled jobs, not the high-flying, glittering career he’d told us about.
Anyway, he’s done a course online and is now a “therapist” and it seriously worries me that he has access to potentially vulnerable people and there’s nothing can be done about it. His motive is to find a woman to bankroll him.
It’s scary how unregulated the industry is.

Yes, the BACP is the main body. No one should bother with a counsellor or therapist who isn’t accredited by the BACP (or UKCP for psychotherapists).

Because it’s not currently a protected legal title, there are some charlatans that advertise as counsellors without being BACP-accredited. Hopefully the title will become protected at some point in the future.

Minimum training standard is a Level 4 diploma, and it sounds like this man does not have this.

Oh, thanks to whoever reported that now-deleted post!

@Sergeverge I this reply says everything you need to know about the quality of that poster's replies.

Remember that not everyone on mumsnet is pleasant, and on top of that it's known there are a small but vocal proportion of men who have deliberately set out to make Mumsnet a hostile place to post for support. There's a Reddit about it. Some people have an agenda, and it's a bad one.

Take the useful replies, and ignore the dorkish ones.

Sadly, I don't think you'll get anywhere with a complaint. Problems with professionals have to be egregious before the professional bodies get anywhere, and sometimes they don't anyway.

What may be worth doing is seeing if other people have complained about this doctor online, and / or contacting local disability or mental health groups who may have information about mental health needs and the medical profession. In the old days there used to occasionally be info days held by disability group ls about how best to navigate the medical system. Perhaps they're still being held.

I must be unwell too, then, because it sounds quite reasonable to me.

Anyone can set themselves up as a counsellor, you don't need training or qualifications. I filed a formal complaint about a counsellor I had once and was told at the time I wasn't the first complaint they had recieved about her. It was done through my GP but the surgery apparently had recieved a number of complaints about her.

You can't understand the fury of a vulnerable woman who's been messed around and had her quality of life seriously affected by a male doctor for some sort of power trip?

If you think all doctors are shining beacons of integrity out for the best for their patients, I'm afraid that's simply not always true.

And some psychology / counselling students are very clearly in it for the power trip, not the patient's good.

Is there objective evidence either way? Not a huge amount, but it is extremely unwise to dismiss a woman's repeated gut feeling that something is 'off'.

Invalidating the posters experience so patronisingly is exactly why abuses go unchecked, because people learn when they raise alarm bells that they are ignored.

Being patronised and systematically dismissed also increases the sense of powerlessness, which is no good for the patient.

Don't let working within the system let it blind you to the fact that not everyone is benevolent.

Have you checked to see what his registration says on the GMC page. He may not be registered as he is now a counsellor but might have details of any restrictions against his name if he's been investigated before leaving GP.

I know someone who is a counsellor and he is quite open about having been unable to pass the counselling exams. In this case, he is at least a nice person, but a bit away with the fairies.

Sounds horrendous @Sergeverge I do think there is a broader issue here though as the industry doesn’t seem to be well regulated so there are some just jumping in the bandwagon and exploiting vulnerable people.

That said, it mustn’t be proving very lucrative for the guy I know, he had a poster up in the co-op the last time I was in.

OP you sound like you’ve been violated by this individual, could you get legal advice?

Someone I know is touting their wares as a counsellor. They underwent a journey to sobriety themselves and now they think that somehow qualifies them to counsel others, he’s a self centred individual who loves the sound of his own voice, I think it’s rubbish at best, dangerous at worst.

Calm down. No need to be so rude and aggressive.

Maybe you should go have a bath, cup of tea or sleep. It will help to ease your aggression.

Nothing. There's no mandatory official qualification. Though there are qualifications available. "Counsellor" is not a protected title, so anyone can use it regardless of how little training they've had. Any decent therapist of any kind has their own professional they go to for regular monitoring of their own mental health, because of everything they deal with in the course of their work. That won't be mandatory for anyone who isn't using a protected title though (and I'm not sure it's mandatory anyway).

Having said all that, you do indeed sound anxious OP.

Fair enough the doctor shouldn't have fobbed you off about your DS. Too many hear "mental health" and put everything down to that. It wouldn't have been difficult to check DSs oxygen levels with that finger thingy they have and your own medical conditions shouldn't have been discussed in front of DS. You got a second opinion and DS got treated, that's the important thing.

As for giving you pills instead of therapy, well that's what the NHS does because therapy lists are very long waiting time and drugs are cheaper. Drugs are often used off license too, that's normal. Some people will have side effects and that's unfortunate, but "issues with functioning" doesn't necessarily mean side effects as such, it can be because they're basically all sedatives of some kind and the sedation can make it difficult to go about normal life. I'm sorry you lost your job, but if you were unwell enough to need meds in the first place, you were likely unwell enough to lose your job if you hadn't taken them, too. I'm glad you're doing better now.

The chats with the GP weren't really chats, they were regular monitoring of your mental state, another totally normal feature of treatment by a GP.

You weren't wrong to find your own route back to health. The NHS is often about patching people up as best they can rather than actually fixing anything. The treatment your old GP went with was meds and monitoring. It's not unreasonable and was arguably adequate, given the NHS criteria of keeping you alive (rather than worrying too much about the quality of life, unfortunately). They can't refer everyone to secondary MH services, they're stretched to breaking point as it is. Unless you're suicidal or psychotic and beyond the GPs ability to keep you alive, then in general you don't get a referral. Most people who need, or would benefit from, therapy end up having to pay for it privately.

My advice is to stop stressing over this. Shit happens. Life doesn't always work out how you want it to or expect it to. The NHS doesn't always treat your conditions the way you want them to be treated. Nobody values your quality of life as much as you yourself do. It sucks to realise that and to be on the receiving end of that attitude. But continuing to fret over this isn't going to do you any favours. You need to move on with your life.

If the GP wants to set up as a counsellor they can, it's not illegal and just because they didn't help you doesn't mean they're incapable of helping anyone else.

’Counsellor’ isn’t a protected title in the UK. Anyone can use it. It is therefore down to the individual when choosing a counsellor to check that the counsellor is registered with a professional group such as BACP, UKPC or BPC.

The counsellor you reference doesn’t seem to be registered with any of these bodies. This should deter some individuals using them but of course many people will just see the medical qualifications and assume all is fine.

Can’t be that mental if IAPT agreed to see you. They didn’t usually accept referrals for anyone with an SMI or more complex needs (doesn’t really explain why you didn’t complain about a medication harming you and inappropriate behaviour, anyway).

Would you consider reporting to GMC now? Sounds like it might be the only thing you can do.

Counsellor isn’t a protected term. Anyone can call themself a counsellor and take on clients.

There are regulatory bodies for counsellors, but registering is voluntary. He is allowed to practice. You could try reporting him to the GMC because he's using his qualifications in his profile. But they may not pursue it.