ALL ABOUT  MANIPULATION OF CLIENTS
I recently stumbled upon a mental health information and referral website operating at allaboutcounseling.com. In it, I discovered several misleading elements, including the dissemination of fraudulent statistics on several social issues, including, but not limited to, domestic violence. Most disturbing, however, was the way the site publishers used the misleading information as an invitation to radical feminism, a political ideology.  It was a bait and switch with a horrific paucity of ethical values mandated for the professionals they represent.
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 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 the clients best interests at all times.
Failing to do that 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 prospective clients.  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. Almost all of it is 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, they state that half of all marriages experience domestic violence, a complete falsehood.  The Centers for Disease Control put the percentage at less than one quarter, and many other valid studies point to even less frequency.
The site erroneously claims throughout in the information pages that it is almost exclusively women that are the victims of that violence and that the small fraction of women who are violent only commit that violence in self defense.
Women who are victims of violence are a serious problem, but they won’t be helped with deceptive propaganda that is designed more to indoctrinate than it is 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 with the unmistakable implication that it is an integral part of the overall mental health picture for women.  In short, to be sane is to be feminist.
Think about what that 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 that implies to their clients that some of the solutions to their emotional difficulties 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 valid 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 (original article only) from the state of California, with their names and contact information as listed in the directory.
I will start with them, sending and email and a link to this article and 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 after being contacted.
End.
I linked this piece in an email to all the treatment providers listed for California advising them that according to the ethical standards for their state, a professional affiliation with an organization that is using disinformation as political propaganda is patently unethical.  Many of them subsequently divested their involvement with allaboutcounseling.com but the site itself has refused communication with me about its practices and continues unabated.
After consulting with Publisher Mike LaSalle, we are both in agreement that just walking away from this egregious abuse of the public trust is unacceptable.
On behalf of MND I am now asking all MRA’s to copy this article in its entirety, or link to it from their blogs and websites, and to use key words, e.g. allaboutcounseling, client abuse, breech of ethics, hate speech, that will help with search engine results.
Per the following email, I have given the California group 30 days to have their services removed from allaboutcounseling.com After that time, I will write an update to this article which will include their names, phone numbers and the addresses of their practices.
Email:
Greetings,
I found your listing and contact information at allaboutcounseling.com.
I am not writing because I am having problems, but because you might be in the near future and I am looking for a way for you to avoid that.
I don’t know if you have carefully reviewed the material presented at allaboutcounseling.com, but it contains a good deal of disinformation and other aspects that are of ethical concern to me, and should be to you.
I explain this more completely in an article I wrote, to which you will find a link at the bottom of this message.
The main focus of that piece is that intertwining political indoctrination, e.g. radical feminism, with promoting overall mental health is patently unethical.  And when you add to that the fact that much of the information used is misrepresented or outright fraudulent, it becomes both deceptive and abusive.
It has to stop.
Please keep in mind that I don’t write this with the idea that you personally are engaged in any such unethical behavior.  I don’t know anything about you and would not proffer such maligning conjecture.
What I do know is that you are listed on that site, and by that fact your involvement is the impetus for their actions, and now for mine.  Since I will be directing a substantial amount of energy at exposing that website for what it is doing, you and your reputation are subject to being collateral damage in the fallout.
Let me explain further.
Currently, the article below is published, with your name and practice information on my website.  That, in and of itself, is harmless to you.  But at the end of the 30 days, I am going to use my considerable reach on the internet to distribute the complete article in a wide variety of places.  If you doubt my word when I say “considerable reach” just google my name.  You won’t have to go through very many pages of results before it dawns on you just how significant this action is.
In the end the article will be exposed to many thousands of people.  But that is still not your main concern.
The larger problem for you would come with search results.
Imagine that when people key in searches on counseling, allaboutcounseling.com, client abuse, or even your name or practice name, that the article mentioned pops up in the top tier of search results.
And I say all that with the understanding here that truly your biggest problem is that you have your name tagged on to a website that spreads lies and distortions while pretending to offer valid science.
As I said, I don’t know anything about you, so I really have no desire to cast a pallor over your professional reputation.  But my work at exposing the hateful practices at allaboutcounseling.com will be launched full force regardless.
This would seem to me to leave you three options.
1.  You can contact allaboutcounseling.com and advise them it is unethical for you to be listed on a site that spreads falsehoods to people at vulnerable points in their lives.
2.  You can just have your listing there deleted.
3.  You can ignore all of this and proceed at your own risk.
I think option number one is the best.
I am starting with California and this action will be expanded till I have covered every region in the allaboutcounseling.com registry.
And regardless of the outcome, my readers will love me for it and it will increase traffic to my site all the more.
I urge you to consider whether your relationship with that particular referral resource is valuable enough to risk placing your practice in the middle of this campaign.
Ultimately, I think the best option is for the owners of allaboutcounseling.com to drop the sexist propaganda, present only valid information and quit trying to manipulate people who are in emotional turmoil.  If they won’t do that, I will gladly settle for making it foolish for any credentialed professional to be associated with them.
End of email.
This article will now also be forwarded to those in the California group, reminding them that continued affiliation with an unethical organization can and should have a negative impact on their professional lives.  I am also preparing a detailed explanation of the ethical breeches and will be filing them with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences in the form of an official complaint, which they are required to investigate.
Paul Elam is the Editor-in-Chief for Mens News Daily and the publisher of A Voice for Men
