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PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM II: Agenda for Change and Psychology's NHS Fraud This is a excellent article published with the kind permission of psycho-fraud.blogspot.com. For the original article click here. Standardisation Agenda For Change (A4C) is the name of a reform implemented by the UK government since 2004. It sought to standardise salaries across the National Health Service (NHS) according to standardised job descriptions and profiles. The process was extensive, and whilst A4C may have been conceived originally with fairness in mind, it was soon hijacked by psychologists, who, almost overnight, catapulted their status and pay scales in the NHS to a level that is now far beyond common sense, fairness or rational justification. This overnight swindle has taken place largely under the promotion of psychology by the British Psychological Society, who appears to have established hegemony within the UK, and by the public's ignorance of what psychology is. Elitism and the Monopoly of Psychology This has resulted in a monopoly on job vacancies in the NHS where psychologists are now sought exclusively where once such posts were occupied by counsellors, psychotherapists, nurse therapists and others specifically and extensively trained to work with distressed or troubled patients. Clinical Psychologists Clinical Psychologists in particular have managed to inveigle their way into consultant positions, attempting to justify this move as 'making psychology more accessible to NHS staff and patients'. The introduction of 'psychologists in teams' has been the pretext under which psychologists have now managed to elevate their status and salaries disproportionately within the NHS. This has involved psychologists placing themselves within Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) in the roles of elitist, pseudo-consultants, now more highly paid than their more experienced colleagues (mental health nurses and social workers) who have formed the backbone of such teams for decades. Class Divisions and the NHS Oligarchy This has often been met by deep resentment, since many of the psychologists who have introduced themselves into teams are young, inexperienced, newly qualified and often-naive people from middle-class backgrounds. The salary and class divisions this has created between psychologists and their working class and underclass patients and co-workers simply maintains an already well-established Victorian, oligarchic structure that ultimately creates unfair power differences whilst breeding contempt. Psychological Imperialism Psychologists' who have misused Agenda For Change as a vehicle for self-promotion illustrate a rise in the egotistical pursuit of power and status promoted by the British Psychological Society. The huge swell in numbers of psychologists around in the UK is evidence of the clamour for social status of students who buy into the notion that, as a psychologist, they can quickly attain the kudos of a medical doctor, but without the competition or work this entails. The Death of Common Sense In an increasingly soul-less and narcissistic world, psychology's takeover of the spaces left between various disciplines - medicine, neurology, counselling etc - and its attempts to misappropriate these disciplines, reveals a charlatanism which typifies any mercenary enterprise. Ordinary people have become fooled into believing that they now need to consult a psychologist to help them understand a world that has encouraged us to ignore our own innate wisdom and intuition. And common sense is being sold back to us as the snake oil of our times... In order to resist the global disempowerment of citizens that psychological imperialism perpetrates, individuals must re-learn to trust themselves instead of the self-appointed experts who claim to have access to specialist knowledge - knowledge that is available to every one of us in the form of our own common sense.
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