Around fifty people in charge of psychotherapy institutions or training want to draw attention to the risks posed by a new law that regulates mental health treatment. They are sending a memorandum to the federal government.
The Ministers council gave the green light to a project drawn up by Health minister Maggie De Block on Friday. It will confine practising psychotherapy to clinic psychologists, clinic speech therapists and doctors. Psychotherapists will no longer be recognised as having a separate profession.
“Seeing as we have not yet been consulted, we deemed it necessary to express our deep concern about the fact that this law, contrary to its intention, risks causing a serious deterioration in the quality of the mental health treatment accessible to patients”, the psychotherapists said in a press release.
The memorandum talks about six issues they think are important, like the specificity of psychotherapy, the benefits provided by the large range of psychotherapy professions and the lack of psychotherapy training.
The proposed law will be analysed by the State Council, examined by the government, and then debated in Parliament.
(Source: Belga)
