UPDATE 19

28 June 2025

Dear Supporter

Welcome to the July update.  We are so grateful to those who responded to our request for volunteers to send FOIs to an NHS Trust.  We have responded to all requests, so if you haven't heard from us, please check your junk box.  There are more FOI questions to follow and we will be in touch with supporters who haven't yet been given questions to send.  A huge 'thank you' to all of you! 

Here's what we are covering in this month's edition:

  •     Suffer the Children Lucy Beney's Family Education Trust report on why having a mental health professional in every school is not the answer

  • Cancellation and Mental health: Save Mental Health and Free Speech Union launch survey

  • Feedback on Heterodox Social Sciences Conference at Buckingham University

  • Male trainees on clinical psychology courses speak out

  • Government to introduce Trans-inclusive Conversion Therapy bill 

Suffer the Children – Lucy Beney's report for Family Education Trust

The Family Education Trust commissioned Lucy Beney, Save Mental Health's Child Correspondent, to write a report about the Government's plan to introduce mental health professionals into all schools.  The report titled Suffer the Children – Why having a 'mental health professional' in every school is not the answer, reflects many of Save Mental Health's concerns: about over-diagnosis of mental health problems; labelling of normal emotions and responses as 'disorders'; encouraging victimhood rather than independence and resilience;  and the rush to send in the therapists who may not be the best people to help and may, indeed, inadvertently make things worse.

Baroness Claire Fox, who wrote the foreword to the report, puts it well when she says: "What is invaluable about Beney’s essay is that it is suffused with compassion, informed by her own clinical practice, but she does that rare service of dispassionately digging deeper beneath the stats and surface crisis. Readers are forced to look beyond the medical model of treating and managing 'the symptoms of our children’s distress', urged instead to be more curious about its social origins. The author advocates that we ‘take a clear-eyed look at where we are going wrong, and not focus on what

is allegedly ‘wrong’ with our children’.”

We couldn't have put it better ourselves. Please take time to read Lucy's report.  The Government certainly needs to do so before carrying out its plan to put mental health professionals in every school. 

The effects of cancellation on mental health

After months in preparation, Save Mental Health's survey, exploring the effects of cancellation on mental health, has now been launched by the Free Speech Union.  It was sent to FSU members in their weekly newsletter. Those aged 18 and over, who have been helped by the FSU, are invited to complete the survey.  

Recent important surveys by Freedom in the Arts and Matilda Gosling for Sex Matters and Seen in Publishing,  have revealed the high costs of ideological capture and self-censorship in the arts and the publishing industry.  Our survey aims to find out what effects cancellation may have on the mental health of members of the public who have been ostracised and harassed for holding the 'wrong' beliefs.  We are hoping for a good response and will keep you posted on developments.

Male trainees on clinical psychology courses speak out

In the last week two male clinical psychology trainees have spoken publicly about their experiences in training.  At Save Mental Health we applaud these trainees for bringing to public attention what is happening on NHS funded training courses. 

One anonymous trainee, in this article on the Centre for Male Psychology website, talks about feeling like the 'invisible man' in a female-dominated system.  He says that "from the very first day of training, I sensed that I was unwelcome" and that male trainees "often experience subtle and overt exclusion, bias, and silencing, which can impede their professional development and well-being." He explains that these experiences are "compounded by a lack of attention to male perspectives in training curricula, leading to feelings of marginalization and isolation".

His is a disturbing account of a doctoral level training course on which "the social dynamics often felt reminiscent of a secondary school playground."  He relates an experience of becoming an "outcast" after a formal complaint was made about him and the double standards related to that complaint. He also talks about the monitoring of his twitter feed and of screenshots being taken which led to a further complaint. 

This trainee's account is shocking but not, sadly, surprising as it is one that bears a close resemblance to accounts from other male students in clinical psychology training. 

In the second account, a trainee called Simon talks to Tim Samuels for the third episode of his series 'White Men Can't Work'.  Simon talks about the Whiteness training on his course and how raising questions about the possible limitations of such an approach was frowned upon. He explains how he felt "pretty dehumanised just by uttering a few questions" and wondered if he was going mad or was in fact a racist.  Simon also reveals that on the course "we didn't really have a conversation on the whole three years about men's mental health".  Tim Samuels expresses incredulity that this could be the case in view of high rates of male suicide.  Simon points out that the course did, though have a 'day on feminism' and 'a day on intersectional feminism'.  Tim asks: "Why hasn't someone said, hold on we're training mental health professionals. Let's keep ideology out of this. Let's focus on evidence-based approaches. And let's give a shit about men who are dying in shocking numbers."  Well said Tim.  I wonder if anyone is listening?  Anyone?

Feedback from Heterodox Social Science Conference, University of Buckingham

The inaugural conference of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham on 5th to 7th June was a great success.  As Eric Kaufmann had promised, the conference brought an impressive selection of heterodox scholars together from the UK and US "to debate and collaborate, with the aim of institutionalizing alternative social science".  With approximately 200 delegates, the conference was contained enough to enable discussion and networking between delegates.  Eric Kauffman started proceedings by proposing that we "turn the critical theory lens back onto critical theory".  He talked about the need to "study woke to understand it and its effects".  You can read more about his ideas in his paper published in February: The post-progressive condition: Meta-critical theory and the rebalancing of knowledge    There was a palpable sense of optimism in the air.  With so many of the best minds in academia in the US and the UK working together, perhaps there is cause for optimism.  

Trans-inclusive conversion therapy bill

It was, perhaps, inevitable that following the Supreme Court ruling that men are men and women are women, trans activists, claiming they did not feel 'safe', would push the government to introduce a trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban. This was debated in the House of Commons on 18th June, with Dame Nia Griffith, Minister for Equalities, declaring that: "I am absolutely committed to delivering on our key manifesto commitments aimed at protecting LGBT+ individuals: a full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, and our commitment to equalise all existing strands of hate crime". 

She also stated that the government is "committed to bringing forward legislation to ban these abusive practices—that is a key manifesto commitment."

James Esses, talked about the proposed ban, with Josh Howie on Free Speech Nation on Sunday.  You can watch the video here. They discuss what the ban might mean for psychotherapists and for young people who are questioning their gender.

 

RECOMMENDATIONS

Psychological Techniques as a Method of Control: Dr Christian Buckland

Thanks to supporter Harry Goodman for bringing this excellent video to our attention.  Dr Christian Buckland talks about the many psychological techniques used during the Covid-19 pandemic to control a fearful populace and how these same techniques may be used in other ways to gain compliance.  Christian Buckland is a principled clinician who is prepared to voice his concerns publicly – a rarity in our profession these days – despite the cost.  He is a psychological advisor to those who are vaccine injured and was previously Chair of the UK Council for Psychotherapy.

Oldspeak Bookshop, Suffolk

If you live in Suffolk or you're planning a holiday there, pay a visit to the Oldspeak Bookshop.  Owner Joanne May explains in this article for the Academy of Ideas that the bookshop is "named after George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four term for unfiltered, traditional language".  She says that "Oldspeak's mission isn't to exclude, but to include voices that might otherwise be drowned out, inviting readers to engage critically with tradition, liberty and heritage".  Joanne recently had a stall at the New Culture Forum literary festival.  If you have an X account, you can follow Oldspeak Bookshop here.


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