Most of the mental health related “helping professions” e.g., psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists and counselors, have a code of ethics that guides their professional conduct. They are sworn, supposedly at the risk of their professional licenses, to follow the ethical mandates of that code in regard to how they conduct their practices and in their relationships with clients.
The rules require them to maintain objectivity, to offer accurate information to the best of their ability and to act in their clients’ best interests at all times.
Failing to do this is considered professional abuse and is subject to sanctions. In most places, professionals are admonished to take all this into account regarding their professional affiliations as well.
In other words, aligning themselves with other professionals or organizations that act to the detriment of those ethical standards is strictly forbidden.
Why then, one must wonder, are there so many therapists that get client referrals though the website that operates under the name ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM?
ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM is on the surface a simple referral resource for helping people find mental health services, and for connecting mental health professionals to possible clients.
What is disturbing is that the site doubles as a tool for the political indoctrination of it’s visitors. They weave information on mental health services with a pro-feminist and overtly anti-male agenda, and target that message at people who are logically presumed to be at highly vulnerable points in their lives.
ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM quotes statistics on issues like rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence and even alleged wage gap information that are wildly inaccurate and misleading, much of it without the benefit of research sources. Most of this information has been thoroughly debunked by sound and unbiased research so its presence on the site can only be interpreted as calculated to deceive.
For example, the site states that half of all marriages experience domestic violence, a complete falsehood. The Centers for Disease Control puts the percentage at less than one quarter, and many other valid studies point to even less frequency.
The site erroneously claims throughout it’s information pages that it is almost exclusively women that are the victims of that violence and that the small fraction on women who are violent only act violently in self defense.
Women who are victims of violence are a serious problem, but they won’t be protected or assisted by propaganda that is designed more to indoctrinate than to help. And this is where ethical violations are quite clear.
ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM proffers a redundant message that demonizes men, and paints women as victims in every way imaginable. And intertwined with their entire body of false statistics and misleading statements are pitches for feminism, dangling the philosophy like a carrot before clients as an integral part of the overall mental health picture.
Think about what this means. People come to the website, usually in enough emotional pain to make them vulnerable and impressionable, and rather than offering an objective, truthful and beneficial doorway into improved living, the authors of the site exploit that pain and vulnerability in order to further their own political agenda.
What would you think of a psychotherapist who implies to their clients that some of the solutions to their emotional problems are to be found in the Republican Party? How about a solution that tells people that saving the environment will also save their marriage?
That is precisely the approach taken by ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM
Political organizations and philosophies are not considered a form of mental health treatment by caring, objective and competent professionals. In fact, the truly professional and skilled in the field would never associate themselves with such practices.
This insanity needs to end, and that starts with the professionals who list their services in the ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM directory.
Following is a list of said clinicians from the state of California, with their names and contact information as listed in the directory.
I will start with them, sending them an email together with an explanation of why they should divest themselves from ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM
It is hard to know how many of them are aware of the breeches in ethics on the site, but they will certainly be aware of those breeches after being contacted. They have only to evaluate their own involvement and make the ethical decision that their own evaluation will foster.
If they choose to remain listed, they should be ashamed of themselves, and should not bemoan the considerable and exhaustive efforts I will personally undertake to expose their activities.
