Yes but how do you know they’re any good and can we know? Do the regulatory bodies require therapies to be tested in trials which provide interpretable data? Or would they consider data from unblinded trials which rely on subjective outcome measure to be acceptable?
My friend Pete (not his real name) isn’t a therapist and doesn’t give me therapy. He’s just a friend but he comes to see me regularly, listens to my problems if I need to talk about them, and sometimes gives me advice. If he was a stranger, set himself up as a therapist and I paid to speak to him professionally I’d probably say he was pretty good as we see things in a similar way, he understands my illness and he tends to make sensible suggestions which I find helpful. I wouldn’t be opposed to someone like Pete, or anyone else, setting himself up as a professional unqualified person to speak to about problems. I’m just not convinced that someone who is qualified as a psychotherapist would necessarily be any better by virtue of being qualified. And they could be a lot worse because of their qualifications – ie if they had been trained in false theories like the BPS model of ME/CFS, and goodness knows what other nonsense is taught.
