The Need for a National Forum for Psychotherapy

Sir, I wish to bring to the notice of our fellow professionals of a large and urgent need that has hitherto been either not recognised or not adequately and seriously thought about. As a member of the retired community of mental health professionals, I concede that this issue should have been or could have been addressed much earlier. But, I suppose, that there is perhaps a critical time for any thing worth while to happen, and this is the critical time. I would like to draw the reader' attention to the following facts: (1) Irrespective of whether the mental health community acknowledges it or not, every mental health professional does psychotherapy. Some may even be unaware that what they are doing is psychotherapy. The form, the style, the method, and the "quantity" may vary widely. (2) A very large majority of mental health professionals have learnt psychotherapy on their own, by the hard way of empirical trial and error learning, paying an unnecessarily heavy price in time and effort. They continue.to tread the path of psychotherapy as lone warriors, struggling all alone against numerous thorns and bushes that lie scattered on the path. (3) As of today, in India, peer-supervision or peer-group-learning is the only economically viable and fairly effective method of learning psychotherapy on a large scale, at all stages of learning. (4) Currently, in India there are numerous islands of teaching and learning psychotherapy, some small, some large, some weak and some strong, etc. (5) There is as yet no common forum for all these scattered efforts and forces to join hands for mutually cooperative and collective promotion of the utility of psychotherapy. Therefore, I am appealing to the younger members of our fraternity to reflect on these issues and to speedily start an official forum for promoting the cause of psychotherapy in India. For example, it can be called association of psychotherapists of India, etc. or by some similar name. To start the ball rolling, I suggest some pointers for consideration: (a) This organisation can be started as an affiliate of the Indian Psychiatric Society, grow and develop under the patronage of the I.P.S. and later become affiliated to an international body like International Federation of Psychotherapy, etc. (b) The objective of this body can be : (i) primarily, exchange of information and experiences relating to training, learning and practice of psychotherapy, (ii) secondarily, facilitating training or learning of psychotherapy through short and long courses, so that such training becomes easily asscessible to all, (iii) thirdly, provide three or four opportunities every year, (some thing analogous to C.M.E.) wherein psychotherapists from smaller or remote centres will have opportunities to discuss their therapy material among their peers, (iv) fourthly, institute a national journal on psychotherapy. Until such time as this becomes feasible, I.J.P. may start a designated psychotherapy section, (c) In the initial phases, bottom-up growth would be most ideal. That is, for the small regional or centrewise associations to start functioning, and then for them to coalesce into a larger national body, under the patronage of the I.P.S. (d) Ofcourse, there will be slightly heavy burden on the organisers, who will have to bear the brunts of initiatives and of administration. This is an inevitable phenomenon throughout the world (organisation collapse if the few "axelmembers" do not bear that extra burden and responsibility). So, the crucial issue at all intending centres will be to unequivocally decide upon the core-group of the organisers or coordinators, and that body is going to be replenished in a staggered (overlapping) fashion once every 2 to 4 years, (e) At each such centre, the initial activities can be to have regular and periodic peer-group meetings (weekly, forthrightly or monthly) and discuss all aspects of psychotherapy, mostly actual case discussions. I hope that this vision which I have attempted to project materialises soon and begins to fulfil the country-wide needs.