News ItemsContents:Professor Chris French, BFMS Advisory Board member, has a new regular column on the Guardian Online science pages. His next topic will discuss false memories and the work of the BFMS and will be appearing on Tuesday, 7th April. Please feel free to leave your comments on the blog site. Hysteria in Four Acts - Article by Paul McHugh in Commentary Magazine.com, December 2008Mother loses libel battle over 'Ugly' lawyer's misery memoir - The Times, 2 December 2008Mother denies judge's abuse claim - BBC News, 18 November 2008Weird ... or what? Why do people have paranormal experiences? - The Guardian, 14 October 2008Is your mind playing tricks on you? - The Guardian, 16 September 2008False child abuse claims to be kept on file - The Daily Telegraph, 13 September 2008Study shows how false memories rerun 7/7 film that never existed - The Guardian, 10 September 2008Experts able to plant false memories in minds - The Herald 29th August 2008Family torn apart by child abuse slur - The Sunday Mercury, 22 July 2008Can you regulate psychotherapy? - The Times, 15 July 2008New research sparks fears over paedophile convictions - The Sunday Mercury, 14 July 2008 plus letters published in response - 20 July 2008You can't trust a witness's memory, experts tell courts - The Times, 11 July 2008Courts do not rely on a person’s memory alone - The Times, 11 July 2008CBS remake of "Sybil" - Press release from Pamela Freyd, FMSF in America to TV Movie Reviewer - 5 June 2008Memory, make-believe and the courts - what's the mischief? - Inside Time, May 2008I see a tall,dark stranger...from trading standards - The Times, 23 May 2008When claims are false, lives can be destroyed - The Times, 20 December 2007Dangerous Convictions - Inside Time, December 2007Second Opinion - Private Eye, 23 November - 6 December 2007Disciplinary Notice - Mrs Janet Sinclair - The Psychologist, December 2007Lies of Little Miss Misery - Daily Mail, 1 November 2007Brain Stains and Brain Stains: In Sheri's Words - Scientific American, October 2007Woman wins memory therapy pay-out - The Press Association, 20 October 2007Talking therapy roll-out gets thumbs-up - Community Care, 18 October 2007Psychobabble is ruining thousands of minds - The Observer, 4 February 2007Click any of the following for news items from that year 2006 - 2005 - 2004 - 2003 - 2002 - 2001 - 2000 - 1999 CBS remake of "Sybil"The item below is a press release that Pamela Freyd has just sent to TV reviewers: SYBIL, however, is well known to be a hoax. See, for example, The New
York Review of Books, 44(7), April 24, 1997, "Sybil-The Making of a
Disease: An Interview with Dr. Herbert Spiegel," by Mikkel
Borch-Jacobsen.1 *** Woman wins memory therapy pay-outA woman who falsely accused her father of rape after undergoing a discredited form of psychotherapy has won a £20,000 payout from health bosses. Katrina Fairlie, 37, sued NHS Tayside claiming that the 'recovered memory' treatment that triggered the accusations ruined her and her family's lives. Ms Fairlie, daughter of former deputy leader of the Scottish National Party Jim Fairlie, underwent the therapy after being referred to Perth's Murray Royal Hospital in 1994. See also: Woman who falsely accused her father of rape reveals 'doctors hijacked my mind', £20,000 payout for woman who falsely accused her father of rape after 'recovered memory' therapy and Settlement for bogus abuse woman *** Talking therapy roll-out gets thumbs-up Mental health charities welcomed a government pledge yesterday to roll out talking therapy services across England to treat depression and anxiety. Health secretary Alan Johnson committed to increasing NHS spending on psychological therapies to £170m by 2010-11, meaning an extra 900,000 people will be treated over the next three years and all GPs eventually will be able to offer the service. This constitutes a massive increase on current pilot funding on talking therapies: £3.7m over two years for the two major pilots in Doncaster and Newham, east London, which were launched last year, and £2m in total annually for 11 further pilots launched this year. A survey of over 15,000 community mental health service users published last month by the Healthcare Commission found that over one-third of people who wanted talking treatments did not receive them. This is despite guidance issued in 2004 by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence calling for people to be offered talking therapies for common mental health problems, given their effectiveness. A coalition of five mental health charities - the Mental Health Foundation, Mind, Rethink, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and YoungMinds - which is campaigning for the guidance to be implemnted said yesterday's announcement was a "welcome boost". Mental Health Foundation chief executive Andrew McCulloch said: "We hope this will result in the extension of psychological therapies to people of all ages, especially older people, young people and to ethnic minority groups, who are often harder to reach and less likely to be offered talking therapy treatments by their GPs." *** Psychobabble is ruining thousands of minds - The Observer, 4 February 2007 Your report, 'Crackdown on therapists who abuse vulnerable', (News, last week) will have been welcomed by the thousands who have had their lives wrecked by poor quality therapy and counselling. The therapy industry has had years to get its house in order. Now hundreds of families are looking to the government finally to bring evidenced-based practice to the thousands of vulnerable people seeking help. Madeline Greenhalgh Matt Smith *** |