Parents want to find a counselor for their children? The pros and cons of the new regulations in this industry need to be understood

01. The psychological counseling industry is mixed, and chaos is frequent

At the end of last year, on December 28, 2023, the "Chinese Psychological Society-Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Psychology Evaluation Norms for Psychological Counselors (Trial)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Norms") was officially released.

My scope of practice is a psychiatrist, I am a clinical precision psychiatrist, I have obtained the qualification certificate of third-level psychological counselor and second-level psychological counselor issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and have participated in the continuing training of many psychological counselors. However, I am not a "psychological counselor" in the strict sense of the word, because I use precision psychological intervention techniques in my clinical practice, which can penetrate deep into people's implicit memory, and my understanding of people's mental activities and behaviors has gone far beyond the scope of psychological counseling.

Still, I'm glad to see the new norms in the field of counselling. Because on the whole, the promulgation of the "Specification" has more advantages than disadvantages.

Let's start with the positive side.

Before September 2017, the qualification examination and certificate of psychological counselors were organized and issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People's Republic of China, and were one of the professions recognized by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. As long as you have a college degree or above in psychology or related majors, or a bachelor's degree in a non-psychology or related major, you can register for the exam after relevant training and standards.

After September 2017, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People's Republic of China cancelled the recognition of the qualification certificate of psychological counselors (those who have obtained the certificate are still valid for a long time), and transferred the relevant assessment qualifications to psychological industry associations, social organizations, enterprises and institutions.

To put it simply, from then on, if you want to become a psychological counselor, you will no longer take the examination organized by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, but take the qualification examination of psychological industry associations, social organizations, enterprises and institutions. There are more ways to take the exam, but there is still a difference in authority.

At present, the most authoritative psychological counseling related certificates are the "Psychological Counselor Professional Ability Course Certificate" issued by the Chinese Psychological Society, as well as the certificate issued by the Chinese Academy of Sciences after the psychological counseling training program was launched.

The above "Norms" were jointly issued by the Chinese Psychological Society and the Institute of Heart Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Although the assessment agency has changed, there is one thing that has basically not changed - the entry threshold for the psychological counseling industry is still relatively low.

The advantage of this is that a large number of non-psychological majors, but with excellent abilities and qualifications, can join the profession. However, the disadvantages are also obvious, that is, the quality of psychological counselors is uneven, and the entire industry is mixed, and there are many irregularities. Here are a few things I know from the Internet and from many patients and family members:

First, some counseling agencies use inhumane ways to change the client's sexual orientation.

In order to change the client's sexual orientation from homosexual to mainstream sexual orientation, i.e., heterosexuality, they use unmodified electroconvulsive therapy or electroshock therapy on them. When homosexuals react physiologically to nude same-sex photographs, they are subjected to electric shocks, causing them great pain, very painful.

This method is very cruel and tends to cause great psychological trauma to homosexuals, causing them to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is simply a copy of the "electric shock maniac" Yang Yongxin.

These so-called psychological counseling institutions do not take into account the psychological feelings of homosexuals, do not really recognize the causes of homosexuality, and are only to meet the blind needs of the client's parents. A number of homosexuals who have suffered from them have taken such institutions to court.

Second, some psychological counselors do things that break through the bottom line and boundaries of professional ethics for the sake of profit.

The domestic psychological counseling industry started late, developed slowly, and is still not very popular among the public, so the income of most psychological counselors is not stable, and the cost of relying on psychological counseling is often precarious.

In addition, there are many psychological counselors who are not highly capable and have low efficacy in the mainstream psychological counseling techniques they have mastered, making it difficult to retain clients. They also need to attend a lot of training courses and hire supervisors, which is also a big financial expense.

Therefore, on the whole, psychological counselors are not a very suitable profession for people with relatively average economic conditions and high life pressure, and many psychological counselors cannot make ends meet in the early stage of practice.

If some psychological counselors have incorrect views and are eager for quick success, they are likely to abandon professional ethics and conduct and misbehave.

For example, some counselors continue to maliciously slander their peers in front of their clients, or even impose PUA on clients, or they are unwilling to terminate services and refer clients even though they know that they do not match the client's situation.

Some counselors use the psychoanalytic school, which believes that the counselor should not have physical contact with the client, let alone personal feelings, and cannot communicate privately without leaving the counseling room. However, some counselors embrace clients of the opposite sex, intentionally or unintentionally sending ambiguous signals. Some also add the client's WeChat, ostensibly for better service, but in fact, it is so that the client can continue psychological counseling.

There are also a small number of psychological counseling institutions that take advantage of the mentality of clients and their parents to "rush to the doctor" and deliberately exaggerate the effect of psychological counseling.

Thirdly, many counselors themselves have serious psychological problems and even personality abnormalities, and if they do not really recover, it is easy to "lead" the client.

Many counselors have entered the profession because they have had serious psychological problems in the past, and even used to be patients with mental and psychological disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder. They hope to "help themselves" by learning psychological knowledge and psychological counseling techniques.

Their intentions are good, but many of them already have certain personality abnormalities, such as narcissistic personality tendencies, and if they are influenced by some schools of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, their narcissistic personality tendencies will be more serious, reaching narcissistic personality changes, and even narcissistic personality disorder.

This serious personality abnormality will gradually lead them to "recovery", because they think that they are particularly good, and when they encounter difficulties and setbacks, they will completely extra-attribute, think that the people they meet are "too bad" and that they are not worth caring about them, and they despise others and society in their hearts.

If this kind of cognition goes to the extreme, it will be harmful to itself because of a serious lack of self-reflection awareness and ability.

If these counselors are not aware of their own problems, they will guide the client to get rid of the psychological confusion in the same way, making them more and more narcissistic, so that they can ostensibly "narcissist" to get rid of the negative emotions caused by self-doubt or low self-esteem.

For example, when the client encounters interpersonal conflicts and conflicts, this part of the counselor will repeatedly emphasize to the client, "Those people are idiots, you are so good, don't be like them." This is a kind of internal and external attribution of the wrong attribution model, when a certain achievement, he will think that he is very good, but when he encounters setbacks and difficulties, he will shift the responsibility to others and the outside world, which can easily lead to narcissistic personality changes and even narcissistic personality disorder in the client.

On the surface, the client seems to be emotionally improved and becomes "more confident", but in fact he lacks real self-confidence and lives in the illusion that he thinks he is good. The superimposed psychological trauma behind their previous psychological problems has not been repaired, and this is still a big problem. Once this "thunder" erupts, the client will have serious psychological problems, and even more self-denial, and the problem will become more and more serious.

Fourth, some psychological counselors illegally accept patients with mental and psychological disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder.

According to the provisions of the Mental Health Law of the People's Republic of China, psychological counselors in psychological counseling institutions can only receive clients with general or serious psychological problems, and cannot receive patients with mental disorders.

Psychological counselors and psychotherapists in hospitals can only provide psychological counseling or psychotherapy to patients with mental disorders under the guidance of psychiatrists.

In addition, neither psychologists nor psychotherapists have the authority to diagnose patients with mental disorders, nor do they have the right to prescribe them, and only psychiatrists can diagnose and prescribe them.

In other words, strictly speaking, a psychological counseling agency without medical qualifications cannot receive patients diagnosed with mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, not to mention schizophrenia.

However, because of the shortage of psychotherapy resources in medical institutions, if a psychiatrist prescribes relevant medical advice to the patient, such as "it is recommended to receive psychological counseling or psychological counseling", etc., the patient can find a psychological counselor in the community based on the doctor's advice.

However, if a counsellor accepts a patient as a counseling case knowing that they have not given the relevant medical advice, this involves "illegal medical practice". Some psychologists even diagnose a client with a mental disorder, which is even more illegal.

There are still many chaos in the psychological counseling industry, and we will write an article to discuss with you in detail when we have the opportunity in the future.

Therefore, one of the original intentions of the issuance of the "Norms" is to evaluate the level of psychological counselors, make the domestic team of psychological counselors more professional, more standardized, and more professional, and promote the healthy development of the psychological counseling industry in the mainland.

This image is AI-generated

02. There are also many limitations in the new regulations for psychological counselors

However, the Code also has a number of limitations, or in other words, it cannot solve all problems.

First, the Code is only valid for psychological counselors in institutions that do not have medical qualifications in society, and is not binding on psychological counselors or psychotherapists in medical institutions, as well as psychiatrists.

Second, the Norms divide psychological counselors into four levels, from low to high, namely assistant psychological counselors, third-level psychological counselors, second-level psychological counselors and first-level psychological counselors.

However, even second-level counselors and first-level counselors are unable to provide efficient psychological services to clients.

There are more than 400 schools of psychology at home and abroad, but from the perspective of scientific psychology, these schools can often only understand people's mental activities and behaviors from the level of explicit memory, that is, the memories that people can remember. It is difficult for them to penetrate into the level of people's implicit memory, so they cannot effectively solve the deep psychological root problems of the client.

Including the supervision of psychological counselors, although theoretically higher, they also master the inefficient knowledge of psychology that still stays at the level of explicit memory.

For healthy people with general or even serious psychological problems, psychological counseling does have a certain effect. For patients with mild depression and anxiety, if you can meet a suitable psychological counselor, you can also benefit. This is something to be affirmed.

However, for patients with more severe mental and psychological disorders, psychological counseling is very ineffective. Some patients say that the psychological counseling they have been exposed to is like "psychological massage", although it can relieve negative emotions in a short time, but it does not solve the substantive problems, and the patients quickly return to their original shape in reality.

In addition, some adolescent patients are reluctant to go again after receiving one or two psychological counseling. The parents wondered, "At first, it was obvious that the child himself said that he wanted to hire a psychological counselor." They asked the child why, and the child was impatient and scoffed at the "psychiatrist".

In fact, today's teenagers are the natives of the digital planet era, they have been exposed to a lot of information through the Internet since childhood, and their knowledge is very wide, and some teenagers are also well-informed, and they know more knowledge than many psychological counselors, and the authority of psychological counselors and even psychologists in their minds has been greatly weakened. If the latter not only fail to solve their problems, but also make them feel naïve and empty, they will even despise these counselors in their hearts.

Therefore, if the child has general or serious psychological problems, or even mental and psychological disorders, parents and children can try it with an open mind, but it is not advisable to have high expectations for psychological counseling.

Of course, if the child can meet the counselor of the deed, it is very lucky. If the child's problem is alleviated, it is not necessarily the school of psychology that plays a major role, but the psychological support provided by the counselor such as long-term companionship, understanding, and tolerance.

From this point of view, the psychological counselor qualification certificate is only a stepping stone, and does not represent the real psychological counseling ability.

If psychologists want to gain a better foothold in this industry, they need to continue to learn and improve, especially to learn accurate psychiatric psychology knowledge that can help clients solve problems more efficiently, and their understanding of people's mental activities and behaviors should go deep into people's implicit memory.

For example, after entering the era of precision psychiatric psychology, psychiatric practitioners need to be deeply aware that whether it is a general psychological problem, a serious psychological problem, a psychological disorder, a mental disorder, or a severe mental disorder, the main root cause behind it is often pathological memory.

If the pathological memory is relatively small and not too severe in nature, it often presents itself in the form of psychological problems or psychological disorders. If an individual suffers from a large number of pathological memory events and is more severe in nature, it may cause the individual to suffer from mental disorders, or even severe mental disorders.

If psychiatric practitioners can accurately restore the main pathological memories of the client, and the client's problems can be solved quickly, the public will naturally be impressed by the industry and have a high degree of recognition and trust.

If they can do better, psychiatric practitioners can also carry out family therapy, marriage therapy, etc., for the client's family, so that the client can have a better social support system, and even if he encounters difficulties in the future, it is not easy to have psychological problems or mental symptoms.

From a parent's point of view, even if you can't find a counselor who can effectively solve the problem, if you meet a counselor who can understand your child's mental activities and behaviors from the level of people's implicit memory, it can still inspire your child and her parents positively, and even open up suddenly. Parents then consciously carry out "self-family therapy" and actively improve the family atmosphere and parent-child relationship, which will play a role beyond the current mainstream psychological counseling, and can help children better recover and return to the normal growth track to a certain extent, which is also very gratifying.