From DisruptedPhysician.com: “The New York City Medical Society on Alcoholism was started in the 1950s by Dr. Ruth Fox to promote AA and 12-step to doctors. This organization subsequently became the American Medical Society on Alcoholism (AMSA) and eventually the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). Like the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD), an organization that promotes the A.A. yet claims to have no formal ties, the ASAM is considered by many to be a front-group that purports to represent one agenda while in reality serving other interests. The ASAM can be considered both a political (prohibition, 12-step spiritual recovery) and corporate (inpatient rehabilitation facilities, drug testing industry) front group in this regard.”
Category Archives: Social Work Ethics
Addiction Professionals Culture of Bullying and Devaluation
Here is an example of an “Addiction Professionals” group on FaceBook. It seems anything but professional if criticism of AA would be censored. This kind of bullying is sadly typical, very similar to how my complaints were treated at Samaritan Counseling Center: just “gone, period”.
Social Work Licensing in New York
If you read this article and listen to this interview carefully, you will see that it is the ‘Addiction Treatment Specialists’ who are largely fighting against licensing. Of course they would. Because they will not be able to resolve the contradictions between how they operate now and how they would have to operate with ethical standards in place.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call them quacks…but…There are any number of providers who may have as little as a high school education… ”
“Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, for instance, said that nearly 300 positions in its Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment Services program would need to be licensed to meet the requirement.” OASAS is also exempt.
I commented on the article:
The article mentioned OASAS as being exempt and the Department of Corrections Drug and Alcohol agency being two of the resistant parties. So I wonder if that has to do with:
1. Thinking 12-step membership qualifies you to be a counselor and you don’t need to follow rules.
2. Knowing that working ‘by the rules’ would conflict with a lot of how drug and alcohol treatment is currently done.
I’m all for Ron Bunce and Karin Carreau (who’s blocked me on Twitter, as if anybody even cares that I have an informed opinion)’s push for licensing, because that could certainly improve those sectors of social work that have been most controversial and horrifyingly unaccountable. But I do have another concern.
On my website notpowerless.com I document my attempts to complain to the licensing board (NYS Department of Education, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services) who both responded that there was nothing wrong with some very blatant and unrepentant NASW ethics violations involving 12-step coercion. My question would be: What is licensing really going to accomplish if the licensing board does not acknowledge NASW ethics violations?
Also, violations are even written into DoE law (as here: 12-Step Extortion with NYS License as Leverage Much like Ron Bunce said in his example that an untrained person could provide psychotherapy to HIM, but not vice versa, here a committee with ‘expertise in problems of drug and alcohol abuse’ can hold someone’s license hostage and force them to complete ‘the program’ or kick them out of their job. That’s scary stuff that will need to be addressed.)
There is a follow-up with the 12-steppers’ side of the argument. He basically takes takes the attitude of denying there is a problem with the status quo, saying “we have a solution that doesn’t have a problem”.
What does she mean when she says 2002 was the first time we tried to regulate the spoken word as treatment? Could it be referring to THIS (Local Services Bulletin No. 2002-05: Impact of Recent Federal Court Decision Concerning Alcoholics Anonymous
On Government Funded Providers)? Update:2020 Now this page does not mention that this was from 2002.
Clergy Sexual Misconduct and 12-step Treatment
If the Spotlight 2015 movie made anything clear, it is that sexual misconduct by clergy is a very real and systemic problem. Part of the problem is the power and secrecy that these priests hold over others, but another part of the problem is the same religious treatment system that constantly fails for drug treatment. Both of these facts being clear, it is amazing that pastoral trainers like Clergy and Congregation Consulting of Samaritan Counseling would 1) advocate more secrecy and diversion when sexual misconduct occurs, and 2). advocate 12-step treatment for sexual misconduct.
“Priest [12-step] treatment unfolds in costly, secretive world”
“Such treatment is typically paid for by the diocese, and has cost the church at least $50 million over the last 25 years [as of 2002], estimated A. W. Richard Sipe, a psychologist and ex-priest who treated clergy for 40 years.”
Rehab? “No, no, no!”
I Might Have Said “No” to Rehab, Too. Amy raises important questions about inpatient rehab centers
#Rehab Mogul
Alcoholics Anonymous, Depression, and Suicide
Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights Sees Nothing Wrong with 12-Step Coercion By State Licensees
This is in response to 9 letters and over 140 signatures and comments from people concerned about 12-step coercion in mental health. Click here to see the petition.
They aren’t going to investigate this particular case. I received this letter from Sarah C. Brown, Deputy Director of Operations and Resources of the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, for all regions nationwide.
Since then I have continued to file complaints and got a response from the Regional office regarding my complaint about New York State Education Department investigator’s telling me that they “don’t look into the AA thing”, which is what my complaint is all about.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
Office of the Secretary
Voice – (212) 264-3313, (800) 368-1019
TDD – (212) 264-2355, (800) 537-7697
Fax – (212) 264-3039
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr
Office for Civil Rights, Region II
Jacob Javits Federal Building
26 Federal Plaza, Suite 3312
New York, NY 10278
January 4, 2017
Thomas Gleason
Oakland, California 94618
RE: Our Transaction Number: 17-255939
Dear Thomas Gleason;
Thank you for your correspondence received on December 5, 2016, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
We are in the process of reviewing your correspondence to decide whether OCR has authority and is able to take action with respect to the matters you have raised.
When contacting this office, please remember to include the transaction number that we have given your file. That number is located in the upper
left-hand corner of this letter. If you have any questions, please contact us at the address and/or telephone numbers listed above.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Neza for
Linda C. Colón
Regional Manager
Conclusions – 12-step coercion is real
I blogged about this problem since Feb 2015. Here’s what I’ve learned:
– Samaritan Counseling Center will not formally acknowledge any problem with or complaint about 12-step referrals made directly after complaints about 12-step coercion.
– Therapists at Samaritan, other than the Executive Director, will privately acknowledge the problem, but records show that the official position is not what either the therapist or client would reasonably conclude.
– New York State will not formally acknowledge any problem with or complaint about 12-step coercion
– Complaints are removed from medical records
– Petitions are completely ignored
– NASW social work ethics codes do not apply to two-hatters
– Complaints are passed off as personality disorders or mental retardation.
I think there are other conclusions, but this is enough for now.
Axis 2 – Personality Disorders and Mental Retardation
Axis II: Personality disorders and mental retardation
This is in my medical records, and ‘confirmed’ by the 12-step interventionist LCSW-R James Garrett, because I complained about Alcoholics Anonymous coercion at Samaritan Couseling Center of the Capital Region.
My complaints, however, which led to this diagnosis, have been removed and are not ‘technically‘ a part of my clinical records, so there is not a very good record of why I am so personality-disordered or mentally retarded. I would like my complaints to be included in my medical records but Samaritan Counseling (which is a right to request according to HIPAA law) is not responding to this request.
I spent several weeks being dissuaded from asking for my records from James Garrett to compare them with the ones I had received from Samaritan Counseling. I finally demanded them, and while he had been telling me that it was her decision not to speak to me, for five months I had several indications that she was willing to speak to me but could not because I had not completed the treatment process, which seemed to be never-ending. His records show that I wanted to know what he was telling her, and this one shows it pretty clearly.
This above was the last note related to my ‘progress’.
The final one:
Was my attempt to explain over a year of AA coercion which I found troubling. In this letter I was still trying to give the addiction specialist James Garrett the benefit of the doubt, not yet knowing what was going on and it wasn’t until a year later that I got this record saying that he had been calling me Axis 2 in the meantime and telling Samaritan to keep boundaries. Samaritan then sent me a termination letter saying that since I hadn’t used a stamp (I hand-delivered the letter to the therapist’s office because it was closer than the post office, while mailing the other two to the Clinical Director Jenness Clairmont and Executive Director David Olsen), that I was ‘under no circumstances’ to have any personal contact with any of them anymore.