Junk psychiatry
Psychiatry is in any case mostly of marginal value. Converting it into Leftist propaganda is unlikely to help anyone
In winter 2019, Leslie Elliott enrolled as a graduate student in Antioch University’s Mental Health Counseling program. At first, she found it to be a stimulating master’s program — informative and clinically relevant. Then she took a required course in “multicultural counseling.”
“We were taught that race should be the dominant lens through which clients were to be understood and therapy conducted,” says Elliott, a mother of four who’d majored in psychology.
Elliott’s professors taught her, for example, that if clients were white, she was supposed to help them see how they unwittingly perpetuate white supremacy. “We were encouraged to regard white clients as ‘reservoirs of racism and oppression.’” White women, one professor told a class, were “basic bitches,” “Beckys” and “nothing special.”
If the client were black, Elliott was told to ask how it felt to sit with her, a white counselor. If the client felt at ease, “my job — regardless of what brought him to therapy — was to make him more aware of how being black compounded, or perhaps caused, his problems.”
After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the three-year program intensified its emphasis on race and oppression, making clear that counselors were to be foot soldiers in the culture wars. “Incredible as it sounds,” says Elliott, “we were encouraged to see ourselves as activists and remake ourselves as social change agents.”
“Critical social-justice therapists” is what Aaron Kindsvatter and others call this new breed of mental health professional graduating from programs across the country. Last year, Kindsvatter left his tenured position at the University of Vermont to pursue private practice in Burlington, where he has treated a handful of clients who were, in his words, “victims of indoctrination attempts” by their “authoritarian” therapists. To be clear, Elliott and Kindsvatter are not talking about a mismatch in sociopolitical views wherein, say, a client is conservative and the therapist is liberal or progressive. To be sure, such a discrepancy can — though by no means inevitably does — create tension. Studies have shown, in fact, that therapeutic relationships were stronger when clients felt comfortable disclosing their political views to the therapist and when the therapist was accepting of those views.
But even when sociopolitical discrepancies affect therapy, they do so within the confines of a time-honored framework that places primacy on the patient.
Social-justice therapy, SJT, however, overturns that framework. It endows therapists — who understand themselves as activists first, not healers — with the power to define the goals of therapy, overriding the client’s needs and preferences.
“Most damning,” Kindsvatter tells me, “is that the major governing entities in the field have turned a blind eye to blatant ethical breaches, because such breaches align with a preferred ideology.”
The governing council of the American Counseling Association, or ACA, has endorsed “multicultural and social-justice counseling competencies.” According to these competencies: “Multicultural and social-justice competent counselors assist privileged and marginalized clients in unlearning their privilege and oppression, [help] privileged and marginalized clients develop critical consciousness by understanding their situation in context of living in an oppressive society” and “initiate discussions with privileged and marginalized clients regarding how they shape and are shaped by local, state and federal laws and policies.”
Another governing entity is the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. The council requires programs to include training on “the effects of power and privilege for counselors and clients” and “strategies for identifying and eliminating barriers, prejudices and processes of intentional and unintentional oppression and discrimination.”
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Finland's top transgender treatment expert slams spread of 'disinformation' on children with gender confusion - and says 'four out of five' kids who question their gender grow out of it
Finland's leading transgender treatment expert said 'four out of five' teens who question their gender come to accept their bodies if they don't receive medical intervention.
Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala previously administered gender-affirming treatment only to patients who met restrictive requirements, but after seeing a significant increase in adolescent patients in the 2010s became skeptical that treatment was the solution to the problem.
In a recent interview with the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanoma, Kaltiala laid out a number of points - including that overwhelming evidence showed the desire for gender transitions spiked among female teenage friend groups exposed to social media.
That evidence supported her assertion that far too little is known about the current wave of gender dysphoria to be administering life-altering treatments to children.
She also said physicians often weaponize parents' fears of suicide to push treatments, calling it 'purposeful disinformation, and spreading it is irresponsible.'
Last year, she testified before the Florida Board of Medicine and Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine and said there was no evidence to support prescribing gender-affirming treatments for patients who experience gender dysphoria for the first time as adolescents.
Kaltiala's findings, used as the basis for treatment in much of Europe, are in stark contrast to the United States' approach to gender treatment.
Kaltiala began handling youth gender transition treatments in 2011 as the chief psychiatrist of one of Finland's two government-approved pediatric centers.
There she initially stuck to a treatment protocol which required patients to have experienced gender dysphoria before puberty and continued into adolescence. Additionally, they could not have had any serious recurring mental health issues, needed to partake in six months of psychotherapy, and have their family's support for hormonal treatment.
After a few years however, Kaltiala found those requirements were not regulating the numbers of patients who came to her and that an increasing number of patients was seeking treatment.
She found the majority were adolescent girls who had never experienced gender dysphoria as a child, and that 75 percent had experienced serious mental health problems before, according to Tablet.
In 2019, Kaltiala and her colleagues published an article saying there was not enough data about the gender crisis teens were experiencing to justify serious body-altering treatments.
'Research on adolescent onset gender dysphoria is scarce, and optimal treatment options have not been established,' she wrote. 'The reasons for the sudden increase in treatment-seeking due to adolescent onset gender dysphoria/transgender identification are not known.'
Her findings resulted in health officials in Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom opening reviews of their processes for administering gender-affirming treatment.
In her recent interview Kaltiala suggested that the kind of gender-affirming treatments administered in the US were likely to solidify problems patients were experiencing, rather than treat them.
She said doing things like using children's preferred names or pronouns could be as severe an act as altering their bodies, because it solidifies in their psyches that there is something wrong with their body.
'It's a message saying that this is the right path for you,' she said, adding that changing names and pronouns is 'not a neutral act.'
Kaltiala also spoke out against the warning that not giving children gender-affirming treatments might lead to their suicides, which has been employed by many doctors across the US to pressure parents into approving treatment for their children.
'It is not justified to tell the parents of young people identifying as transgender that a young person is at risk of suicide without medical treatments and that the danger can be alleviated with gender reassignment,' she said.
She said the suicide narrative might be pushed by 'adults who have themselves benefited from gender reassignment, have a desire to go out and save children and young children. But they lack understanding that a child is not a small adult.'
Debate about whether to restrict child gender care in the US has intensified in recent months, as a growing number of former patients who regret having irreversible procedures as children say their desire to medically transition was not challenged enough.
The data on how many transitioners change their minds and seek to detransition, or are pressured to do so by relatives or employers, is not reliable, but estimates are in the range of 1 to 8 percent.
A report by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found the number of Americans who identified as trans nearly doubled from 2017 to 2020, with 300,000 now identifying as such.
This rise has been strongest among young people, and that is where legislators have so far focused their efforts. Around 1.5 percent of American teens identify as trans, the highest of any age group.
Many trans-identifying children will undergo hormone treatments, hoping to prevent themselves from developing sex-based characteristics linked to their birth gender.
These often include puberty blockers, which push back the start of the process, and medication that boosts either estrogen or testosterone levels. Puberty blockers are used to pause puberty and consider whether they want to transition.
By stopping the body's production of sex hormones, gendered characteristics like a deeper voice in men or the development of breasts in women can be halted. The long-term effects of these drugs are not fully understood, but it can take years for the body to naturally start producing hormones after stopping the drugs.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the drugs to stop precocious puberty - when a child goes through the process earlier than when is healthy - but they are used off-label for trans care.
Hormone therapy can then trigger desired sexual characteristics in a trans teen. By giving a person born as a female testosterone, or a person born male estrogen, they will instead develop traits that match their wanted gender.
The long-term consequences of taking these drugs in youth has not yet been determined, leaving many experts fearful of the recent increase in their use.
Gender-affirming operations, often called top or bottom surgery, will either make changes to a child's genitalia or chest to match that of their new sex. These are irreversible and can leave a person infertile.
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I’ll Pass on Celebrating Diversity
There was a time, believe it or not, when leftists said “Celebrate Diversity” and meant it; when it was largely a slogan on a bumper sticker. Now it’s an order: “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY…OR ELSE!” Sorry, I’m not interested.
I’ve always had a natural inclination to push back against anything I was forced to do – insist I’m supposed to care about something and the odds that I won’t increase exponentially. Take, for example, US soccer. During the World Cup all the ads were about “We’re going to do this” or whatever their slogan was. The American public simply doesn’t care about soccer and the US sucks at it compared to the rest of the world, but these corporate sponsors had to do something. It made me root against them, which was easy because I knew they’d lose.
Women’s soccer is much more annoying, by the way, they’re little leftists with purity tests demanding obedience. I’m not interested in cheering for people who hate this country while demanding they be cheered. Hard pass.
When it comes to “diversity,” I have the same attitude. Skin color or who you sleep with are the least interesting parts of what anyone is or does. If that defines you it tells me you’re not bringing anything substantive to the table and I’m not interested.
I’m tall, 6 feet 5 inches; should I demand high fives over that? No. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Hell, I smoked for a long time, so I tried to stunt it.
Yet, we now have a political party that insists the differences be celebrated, exclusively. That people be treated differently based on their skin color. We used to have a word for that, didn’t we?
What I find even more bizarre are the leftists who buy into it and make it individual. Hearing some Democrat in a town hall or whatever talk about how they’re a “diverse individual” is incredibly odd and, honestly, stupid. But we are dealing with Democrats here…
I want nothing to do with it. Not because I care what these people do, I honestly don’t – if whatever they do is done with other adults who are willing, I couldn’t care less. The problem comes in when they seek to force their will on children.
How many graphically sexual books targeting children need to be highlighted before Democrats think, “Hmm, maybe explicit sex between adults and kids isn’t really something that will help kids learn to read or write?” How about just thinking that things Hustler would’ve edited out of their letter section might not belong in school libraries might not be a good thing?
Democrats, rather than deal with the reality they support for grooming purposes (political grooming mostly, though there is little doubt there’s a lot of the other kind too), simply ignore it when they can. Yet, they also demand the sentiments behind it be celebrated.
What kind of creep would “celebrate” a drag queen grinding their genitals in front of little kids? Democrats.
Celebrate diversity…except when it’s a joke you don’t like. Tiger Woods can be attacked over a tampon joke by white ladies because why not? Oddly, these people immediately reverted back to knowing what a woman is when they could take offense at something.
Kamala Harris MUST be celebrated not only because she’s black, but because she’s also Indian (though she rarely mentions that outside of speaking to Indian or Asian women’s groups, weirdly), but Nikki Haley must be attacked for not being Indian enough because she’s a Republican (both of which were done by NBC News, by the way).
Meanwhile, Harris can tweet out, “My message to Black women and girls everywhere: Never ask for permission to lead.” Are women and girls with other skin colors supposed to wait for permission to lead? By the way, what is a woman?
Nothing that comes out of the mouths of Democrats makes any sense or is remotely intellectually honest in any way. They don’t deserve your respect, they have earned your contempt. Don’t play their game.
I will celebrate accomplishments, that’s it, and not even all of those. I will choose which accomplishments I deem worthy of celebration and I can promise you that none of those things will have anything do with what people had nothing do with.
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/02/21/ill-pass-on-celebrating-diversity-n2619765
********************************************************Southern Baptists Oust Saddleback Megachurch, 4 Others for Appointing Female Pastors
Good to see that at least some churches respect Bible teachings
The Southern Baptist Convention—a protestant Christian denomination with over 47,000 churches nationwide—voted Feb. 21 to remove Saddleback Church from its group for recently appointing a woman as a pastor.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee ousted Saddleback’s membership—along with four other churches—“on the basis that the church has a faith and practice that does not closely identify with the convention’s adopted statement of faith, as demonstrated by the church having a female teaching pastor functioning in the office of pastor.”
Saddleback Church is a congregation in Lake Forest, California, with more than 30,000 weekly attendees.
When Pastor Andie Wood replaced Saddleback’s founding Pastor Rick Warren last summer, Wood’s wife, Stacie, was also appointed as a church pastor.
In a statement emailed to The Epoch Times, Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee Chairman Jared Wellman said the decision was not an easy one.
“These churches have been valued, cooperating churches for many years, and this decision was not made lightly,” Wellman said. “However, we remain committed to upholding the theological convictions of the [convention] and maintaining unity among its cooperating churches.”
Wellman referred to the Southern Baptist Convention’s guidelines, which stated in Article VI that “while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
The guidelines further cite the Scriptures 1 Timothy 2:12, in which the Apostle Paul states, “I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man.”
In addition to Saddleback Church, the committee removed four other churches for appointing female pastors: New Faith Mission Ministry in Georgia, St. Timothy’s Christian Church in Maryland, Calvary Baptist Church in Mississippi, and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Kentucky.
It also voted to remove Freedom Church in Florida, which allegedly failed to investigate sexual assault claims.
Any of these churches may appeal its removal at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in June, a spokesperson for the convention told The Epoch Times.
At the convention’s annual meeting last June, as the Executive Committee considered removing Saddleback over appointing women pastors, Warren virtually spoke at the meeting and called on Baptists to set aside their differences and work together to spread the gospel message.
However, Warren said on Twitter Feb. 21 he and his wife, Kay, would respond to the Southern Baptist Convention “in our time and way through direct channels” including their social media, newsletter, and radio show.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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