Human Givens Therapy?

[Jackie]

A online mate of mine has been offered a free trial of a new therapy called "Human Givens". Does anyone have experience of this therapy? I did some research online for her and it seems to be a mix of CBT and NLP. The NLP bit is troublesome to me and her as we have heard bad things about their techniques. Thanks Jackie x

 

[crzycadn]

A online mate of mine has been offered a free trial of a new therapy called "Human Givens". Does anyone have experience of this therapy? I did some research online for her and it seems to be a mix of CBT and NLP. The NLP bit is troublesome to me and her as we have heard bad things about their techniques. Thanks Jackie x

Lots of stuff on the "net" about Human Givens - not very flattering. This link below will give you lots of info.

National Quack Service #1: ?Human Givens Therapy? - Counterknowledge.com ¹

I personally would be very leery of so-called new therapies - look at what happened in Arizone recently where those 2 people died in some big "sweatbox".

¹ See below: http://forum.psychlinks.ca/therapy-and-therapists/20063-human-givens-therapy.html#post151040

 

[David Baxter PhD]

There is never a shortage of quackery and "new therapies" out there. The key is to look for evidence-based therapies:

• What evidence is there that the "therapy" benefits people? Testimonials do not count. Anectdotal stories do not count. If research studies are referenced, go to the sources and read them for yourselves - with a critical eye.
• What issues or disorders do they claim it benefits?
• What risks, dangers, or side-effects have been identified?
• Has the "therapy" been approved by a real regulatory body such as the APA or the FDA?

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Human Givens Therapy

Human Givens Therapy
By R.P. McMurphy
4 February 2009

A worrying trend in the NHS at the moment is to offer ?catch-all therapies? that claim to help with numerous different ailments. One such therapy that is gaining momentum within several Primary Care Trusts is Human Givens Therapy. It is also endorsed by the usually responsible MIND mental health charity. It was invented relativley recently by two men called Ivan Tyrrell and Jo Griffin.

This approach claims to integrate elements from a variety of sources, including neurobiology and cognitive behavioural therapy. CBT has a strong evidence base and is well researched, but it cannot just be assumed that by combining different therapies that an approach might work.

The most alarming thing about Human Givens is its very poor evidence base. I have not been able to find any peer reviewed papers or articles on the effectivness of the therapy, or anything significant in any professional journals about Tyrrell and Griffin.There are a few articles and a few texts on the internet, but these all appear to have been published by The Human Givens Institute (surprise, surprise).

Like most purveyors of sciencey-sounding counterknowledge, they have an impressive website. There are the usual new-age phrases such as ?Is the UK emotionally happy? ? and ?Humanity under stress?a survival strategy?. There is also a short mention of two clinical outcome studies, but it does not describe the methodology used or the setting.


The topics of the most recent HGI conference in the news section make interesting. Titles include ?How schizophrenia can be created in 24 hours? and the bizarre ?Amazing transformations; working with molar memories?. My favourite is ?Why emotional arousal is the handmaiden of tyranny?.

Becoming a Human Givens therapist entails you becoming a member, a graduate member or a registered member. To achieve some of these levels you will have to get a Human Givens diploma (naturally, you have to pay for this). Memberships are available through the ?MindFields college?. Can you guess who the college principal is? Mr Ivan Tyrrell. Director of studies? Yup, Jo Griffin. Kerching!

When you qualify, you can apparently put the initials GHGI (Graduate Human Givens Institute) after your name. But I bet it would soon get boring having to explain what it stood for everytime anybody asked.

On a darker note, this kind of therapy is being touted as offering patients ?more choice?. But patient choice should be informed choice. Spouting claims that any one therapy can help numerous problems gives more vulnerable patients false expectations. To me, this seems like a money-making exercise dressed up as an effective alternative to traditonal psychotherapy. With the government?s pledge to offer more psychological therapies to people with mental health difficulties, I fear the floodgates will soon be open to more of this kind of nonsense. Beware of Human Givens: it?s coming to a town near you soon.

The author has worked in the NHS as psychiatric nurse for 17 years. He currently holds a management position in one of the country?s largest Mental Health Foundation Trusts.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Human givens therapy: The evidence base

Human givens therapy: the evidence base
by Nadia CORP, Anna TSAROUCHA Anna, and Paul KINGSTON
Mental Health Review Journal, 13(4), December 2008, pp.44-52.

This review of 95 documents on human givens therapy in the context of mental health finds that the evidence base is limited. It is overwhelmingly based on expert opinion backed up by brief case studies, or on therapists? anecdotes, and little is published in the mainstream literature. Further, robust research is required.

Context
Human givens therapy developed in the early 1990s and is based on the notion that everyone has ?given? emotional and physical needs, and the innate resources to meet them. These are part of human nature and the means by which people achieve their full potential. Proponents claim that human givens therapy incorporates elements from other counselling and psychotherapy approaches, and can be used to identify and treat any problem, however severe, in one or two sessions. This review from the Centre for Ageing and Mental Health at Staffordshire University aims to test the evidence for what is an increasingly popular therapy.

Methods
The following sources were searched from 1992 to June 2008: the Cochrane Library; Dogpile metasearch engine; Ebrary [Staffordshire University e-books]; Google Scholar; Ovid Nursing Collection; ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source; PsycINFO; PubMed; ScienceDirect; Scirus; Social Care Online; Web of Knowledge; and ZETOC. Three Human Givens journals were also hand searched, although with gaps for issues that were unavailable: Therapist; New Therapist; and Human Givens.

What search terms/strategies were used?
The sole search term was ?human givens?.

What criteria were used to decide on which studies to include?
This is primarily a scoping review to identify what literature is in existence in a new field. Any reference to human givens therapy was thus potentially relevant.

Who decided on their relevance and quality?
A total of 876 items was identified, of which 582 were immediately excluded as irrelevant (e.g., web links, media articles, book reviews) or duplicates. Of the remainder, 13 were unavailable and another 144 were excluded on closer inspection as editorials, conversation pieces, personal pages or other subjective items. A total of 135 documents were acquired in full text, dealing with the human givens approach in various contexts including mental health, business, social work, education and policy. Documents selected for review were quality assessed using a referenced approach that allocates a level of evidence from Ia (based on meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials) to IV (evidence from expert committee reports or opinions, or respected clinical experience, or both). Specific responsibility for screening and quality assessment is not reported.

How many studies were included and where were they from?
The review focuses on the 95 documents dealing with the human givens approach in mental health. These are listed in Table 1 which categorises studies on the basis of context (human givens approach, mental health services, human givens therapy, miscellaneous) and descriptors (conceptual, organisational, application, techniques), and reports their evidence level.

How were the study findings combined?
The review is narrative and based on the categorisation in Table 1.

Findings of the review
Human givens approach. Of the 30 documents in this category, 22 were purely theoretical and offered no evidence of effectiveness. The remainder consisted of five ?expert opinions? accompanied by brief case studies, and three were anecdotal accounts by therapists. Twenty-four of the documents were from Human Givens publications (i.e. one of the three hand searched journals, or books from Human Givens publishers).

Mental health services. Seven studies examined the impact of employing human givens therapy from an organisational perspective, including the NHS and voluntary sector. All were categorised as expert opinion, five included brief case studies and two provided anecdotal evidence from a therapist. Six were from Human Givens publications.

Human givens therapy. Forty-one papers or books (40 from Human Givens publications) focused on therapies and were further sub-divided into general, addiction, anxiety, depression, psychosis, children or young people, clients? experience, training, practice research network and miscellaneous. Virtually all were based on expert opinion plus brief case studies, or on anecdote, and all claimed positive outcomes. Only two papers provided slightly higher Level III evidence from descriptive studies and these focus specifically on the use of the rewind technique (also known as the visual-kinaesthetic dissociation technique, or fast phobia cure) to treat trauma, rather than on human givens therapy per se.

Miscellaneous. The 17 papers in this category referred to philosophy, approach or techniques but did not go into any detail. Eleven appeared in Human Givens publications and none provided evidence of effectiveness.

Authors' conclusions
The current evidence of effectiveness for human givens therapy is limited, overwhelmingly positive in respect of therapeutic outcomes, and largely based on expert opinion or anecdote. It is ?not of sufficient quality to allow strong recommendations for its use to be made.? Further research using rigorous designs and methods is needed, and details of some current initiatives by the Human Givens Foundation are provided. Mainstream journals are also advised to give ?space for healthy debate to take place between counsellors, psychotherapists and all professionals in the mental health field.?

 

[Jackie]

Many thanks for all this information, which I have passed onto Kath, my mate. I found out that they use something called the "rewind" technique, used by NLP practitioners. Apparently some have been cured of various things after only one treatment, yet others have been traumatised by this technique.

Kath has been offered this by the Job Center as part of their initiative to get people off the sickness benefits here, so she doesn't have much choice, however now she will proceed with caution after reading your posts. Thanks again.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Apparently some have been cured of various things after only one treatment, yet others have been traumatised by this technique.

That (the highlighted part) in itself would be an alarm bell for me.

And, yes, the application of all these "new" techniques without proper training in psychopathology and psychotherapy can be dangerous. That is often the biggest danger of these "new breakthrough techniques" (e.g., NLP, EFT, etc.). They tend to be oversimplistic and people are trained to offer the techniques without first having proper training in psychotherapy and abnormal psychology. Then they race out and start offering it as a cure-all to anyone who walks in the door. To me, that's akin to discovering a new drug and prescribing it to every new patient regardless of symptoms.

What's happening in the UK these days is particularly worrisome, because under the general guise of cost-cutting and financial efficiency, the NHS seems to be adopting the criterion of cost as the major criterion for expanding mental health services. Cognitive behavior therapy is a legitimate and evidence-based treatment for certain mental health issues but to apply it indiscriminately across the board is absurd. I see this attitude elsewhere in the UK as well, all the way to some of the endorsements emanating from Buckingham Palace via Prince Charles, who seems to be willing to endorse all sorts of unscientific "cures".

Mental health treatment needs to be based on evidence and on what is best for the patient, not on how much it costs or on how quickly the latest high school graduate can be trained to deliver the service. Delivery of mental health services should not be treated as an assembly line or car wash.

 

[orly]

It is my understanding that those people delivering the service do not have to have had any form of therapy themselves! How can they profess to understand others til they have some self knowledge?