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 hold a management position in one of the country’s largest Mental Health Foundation Trusts.
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16 responses
The New Scientist has some interesting views on HGT. I’m sat here thinking about a supposedly groundbreaking work that has no emipirical data to back up its claims and wondering why it seems so familiar. The Interview with Griffin is an eye opener - he mentions encountering conflict from the academic community, but acceptance from people working “at the coal face”. Again, this sounds familiar. Dianetics anyone? The discussion of “molar memories” being an ancient survival mechanism that affects our rational processes, almost identical to Hubbard’s notion of the engram. And in the blurb for the book discussing Molar Memory it’s described as “an immensely inspiring book, ‘An Idea in Practice’, also demonstrates how the human givens organising idea can bring clarity to ethics and diplomacy.” Ethics and diplomacy?
There is a Joe Griffin listed on the excellent Scientology Stats database - not a smoking gun, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same guy. Someone should call RTC!
GHGI? GNDN more like it.
Interesting - I was working in a bookshop at one point and I remember seeing this book and thinking how odd it was that it was basically a self-help book but full of neurosciencey jargon.
Maybe I need to read it and blog about it…
For Darwins’s sake! How much more of the taxpayers hard earned is the NHS going to waste on such idiocy? Please sign my petition on precisely this matter at “petitions.number10.gov.uk/quackery”. Thankyou.
It’s absurd to link Joe Griffin of MindFields College with Scientology because a “Joe Griffin” is listed on a scientology database. If you knew anything about the Human Givens approach or Joe himself this would be self evident - It is simply not him.
Human Givens may be quackery. I don’t know yet, but this article has no substance to help me decide. Essentially it reads more like egocentric sarcasm assuming a sympathetic audience. I take it the author hasn’t noticed a lot of people make a significant amount of money from traditional forms of medicine? Perhaps that is what he is trying to protect?
It hasn’t given me a reason to come back to counterknowledge.com.
Two years ago I marked the 12th anniversary of my first diagnosis of depression. I had been given just about every possible kind of counselling, psychiatric drug and intervention known to science, including being sectioned. I had not made an inch of progress in all that time. I sought a human givens therapist, rather cautious because I had previously read a web site similar to yours. It’s NOT a cult, and it’s NOT a system of belief - far from it. What it does, very effectively, is to get past all the quackery provided for years by the NHS. I have now celebrated a different anniversary - one year without a moment of depression, and not now taking any medication, and this is due entirely to the human givens approach. My success will not have been counted in any scientific evidence-based study, but I do feel very much better, and that’s thanks to the human givens. When I find anybody caning the human givens lot I always begin to look behind the scenes and ask myself where their emotional needs are not being met. Perhaps the answer will give the clue as to why somebody has a vested interest in trying to bad-mouth something about which they clearly know very little.
This seems to be the reaction to any form of new thinking, I understand why as there are con merchants out there, but I doubt many con merchants would go to the levels that the Human Givens Organisation has, and I bet that when Ration Emotive Behavioral Therapy or CBT was thought up and introduced that it was seen as Quackery by those a little fearful of it, and I know that someone will say that these forms of treatment are backed up by scientific study now; however there is some conjecture about the way that CBT’s studies are researched and reported (not saying that this is correct but it is out there). And in terms of getting qualified for Human Givens you have to study with them and pay them to get their qualification. How stupid a statement is that, to be able to practice CBT you have to go and learn with someone associated with CBT, afraid that doesn’t allude to evidence that it is quackery. And looking at the fee’s for the course, it’s about the same as diploma in photography, hardly Kerching is it?
I think what the Human Givens want to do is take elements of other therapies that have had success and look at them in terms of effectiveness to include and use to treat people, that seems a sensible approach to me. As someone who has had a mental health issue I get a little annoyed when therapies seem exclusive of others, no one approach can work for everybody.
I think you do a disservice to anyone suffering to discredit something just because it seems to be new and might upset more intrenched therapies and in the long run drug companies.
Perhaps what would be more beneficial to patients, clients whatever you want to call us is to open a dialogue, share - I’m sure that the Human Givens would be open to that. I cannot tell you how much disservice you do people out there who are suffering with all this bickering between models of therapy, it’s not very adult and something I would like to see less of.
I’m not suggesting that anything should be beyond scrutiny, just don’t think to yourself your doing anyone a service by cynical attacks to something new.
Ultimately from someone who has had a mental health issue what I hope that anyone who is setting themselves up as a therapist would do is be open to what can work. Take their lead from the patient, see the ‘work’ as a team effort.
What worked for me was various elements of relaxation, hypnotherapy and CBT, and discussions with a therapist - all working together for the common goal of elevating pain, which is what should be the intention of anyone offering help. I bet you if you looked into any of those treatments you would find reports of how they haven’t worked, or claims that they can ‘cure all’.
Getting better is hard enough, but when it’s a mind field of conjecture out there without good reason it just makes it all the more difficult. If the psychiatric profession would stop seeing themselves as experts but rather that the patients are, and that we all fight the good fight - maybe the better off we all would be.
What a dreary, ill informed and generally sour article this individual has written. It is devoid of any factual information or explanation of Human Givens, other than to cause mirth and hilarity- I only hope this doesn’t sum up how the person has worked with patients over a 17 year career?
However, I was D E L I G H T E D to know that this person is now a manager in one of the UK’s largest mental health authorities. Perhaps they might spend a little more time trying to help patients find constructive ways forward, rather than promoting a pill popping culture?
I am going to give Human Givens Therapy a try.
I suffer from agoraphobia and I take zoloft and yet no relief.
I am sick of living in fear and the counter auguments have convinced me that HGT may be worth a try.
Thank you gentlemen. God bless you all
I have been researching and looking at Human Givens for 8 years. I have a few criticisms and a few things I agree with. Some of it makes sense like the Human Givens main basis that we have emotional needs and if they are met we can be free of depression and other health problems. Basically you need good friends, and intimate relationship and a challenging job and something you do you are respected for to have your needs met. Not sure I agree with this but it makes sense and is a good selling point to NHS hospitals and more. If you look around at people who are depressed you ususlly find that they are not getting their emotional needs met. But which comes first?
If you are feeling low you probably will not want to go out and get a partner and you will struggle to cope at work. What the Human Givens can help with is breaking the cycle.
Unlike the use of drugs you can’t in reality test such a subjective based approach to health care as it relies on individual experience. If it works for you then good if not then try something else. You will have to search for something that you think may work for you if you think it HG there is a lot of information available for you to make a informed choice – which is what it’s all about
I have spent 2 years having CBT and for me it was a nightmare, and I could not break the cycle that I found myself in. I therefore, decided to try to find another way. The HG spoke about things that I could understand and relate to, and there was someone there to work through the pain with me. I am now trying to find out more, and to become a councelor for others. However, I really do not think that anyone who has not been in a state of depression themselves should make such unhelpful statements without trying the system first.
I first heard about Molar Memories in a Youtube video of Joe Griffin speaking about paraphilias. He claimed these disorders could quickly and easily be cured if the sufferer was guided back to the precise moment in his past where an imprintation took place, setting these lifelong obsessions into motion.
I have had a severe tattoo paraphilia for more than half of my life. Nearly every minute of everyday for over 20 years I have been thinking of tattoos. I’ve tattooed myself hundreds of times with any implement i could find that would do the job. My life has been completely out of control, so Griffin’s concepts were more than interesting to me. I just wanted to know how i could use his information to treat myself, since i couldn’t find a practitioner in the US for this therapy.
When i was four years old, i discovered masturbation. I have always vividly remembered what it was that excited me to have an orgasm that first time. It was a strange thought, a thought of transforming into a different person. I have no clue why this excited me, but it did. I could always recall this experience, but it wasn’t until last month after revisiting the video, that I understood what ultimately took place.
I began to fully process what Griffin was saying, and realized that ALL of my turn ons (there were others like amputation, becoming blind) fell under an umbrella of all things Transformation. They were clearly aligned with my first sexual experience. And just like that, a massive blow was struck to this devastating obsession. I saw tattoos in an entirely new way. They were less meaningful and seemed even silly. The day after this epiphany, the “tattoo loop” was nearly half its usual strength, the first ever reduction in these thoughts.
Now it wasn’t completely gone, but it Was weaker. So I decided to take further action, and went to a tattoo removal clinic. I have been for removal in the past, so this was nothing new. What WAS new however was how i felt after this particular treatment. I no longer found tattoos attractive!!! They instantly meant nothing to me.
And I’m sitting here a month later, still with no desire to tattoo myself, feeling as if i conquered the world. Just remembering the many times I contemplated ending my life because of doctors and literature telling me there was nothing that could be done. That I’d have this ruinous disorder for life. So the author can call Joe Griffin a quack if he’s gets some satisfaction from it. It really makes no difference to me, because I know the man’s a lifesaving genius.
The Human Givens approach is new and exciting and about as far from being weird or cultish as you could ever get. There is nothing on the agenda for HG therapists but getting people to feel better as quickly as possible because the knowledge is there to enable that to happen.
As a business model, what could be better than saying that people are really sick and need years of therapy, yet they do precisely the opposite of this.The founders are themselves experienced and effective therapists who have found a way of teaching what they do to others, so that more people can recover from anxiety and trauma.
They are genuine and commited to bringing relief to people suffering from stress in many different ways and they aim to bring actual relief from a lot of long term suffering because they know that this is what good therapy should be doing. They do not pathologise people, they just help people to build on their strengths and calm themselves down into a state of optimum mental health.
blah blah blah, The NHS is a waste of time anyway, Hurra to HG, its a breath of fresh air!!! wake up, its time to weed out the dinosaurs and move on!
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