COAG
Moves Toward Federalism for All Therapists
HypnosisAustralia,
November 2008
By
Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist &
Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.
The training
of those advertising their services as hypnotherapists has only ever been
cosmetically regulated within Australia. Different associations for professional
hypnotherapists or those having hypnosis as a secondary discipline have
had their own minimum required training standards required for entry.
Various schools have taughted a jamboree of differently accredited trainings
in all different states. There has never been government recognition for
a minimum level of training for those calling themselves hypnotherapists
or those who are therapists of any other kind who use hypnosis as a secondary
discipline. Regulating anything is expensive for government and in this
time of economic crisis governments are looking to shed costs not incur
them.
Tertiary
and university healthcare training and regulation has always been a state
by state affair in Australia. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG)
is out to change that in that it is seeking to establish a new accreditation
and registration scheme of medical and healthcare professionals. A new
national medical register is to be set up in Canberra. This of course
would only include members of the nine currently government-required registered
professions which does not include counsellors, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists
or naturopaths and a variety of other professions.
The implications,
however, are clear across the board for training in health professions
in the future: training standards will be federal and will supersede any
current state-required standards. The stick of federalism will sit upon
the shoulders of all publicly offered training providers in all healthcare
professions in time.
In the COAG
National Action Plan For Mental Health Document, 2008, the document states:
"The
Plan provides a strategic framework that emphasises coordination and collaboration
between government, private and non-government providers, aimed at building
a more connected system of healthcare and community supports for people
effected by mental illness/"
Mental illness,
however, is being diagnosis by GPs at the initial contact point in order
for them to make Medicare referrals to professionals. In other word the
poor have to be deemed sick before they get help. The problems here is
that a GP is not qualified to make such a diagnosis and often misdiagnoses
patients but without a diagnosis of mental illness they are unable to
make those referrals."
In the private
sector, however, people can freely seek help to overcome problems that
they do not deem mental illness. A coordinated national training standard
for hypnotherapy through the COAG framework would help a greater legitimisation
of the profession and a greater likelihood of GPs referring patients to
such services.
©HypnosisAustralia,
November 2008
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