Iatrogenic Trauma from Ineffective Therapy

Despite repeated claims by the mental health industrial complex and its internet advocates, iatrogenic harm from therapy is very real.

A year ago today, Ross Rosenberg M.Ed., LCPC, CADC discusses iatrogenic trauma as a result of ineffective therapy on his blog.

He defines iatrogenic trauma as the long-term suffering and distress caused by the poorly executed, mistaken, and/or incompetent treatment of any painful, limiting, or frightening mental health or medical problem.

He explains that this trauma can be caused by any number of factors, like:

• Therapist’s unrealistic optimism or expectations about the patient or treatment
• Systematic ignorance of a medical or mental health problem
• Stigmatizing and shaming of patients
• Overstated assurances of efficacy, causing the patient to feel like a failure
• Treatment failure, resulting in no progress or a worsening of the patient’s condition
• Painful complications
• The creation of unanticipated and unrelated conditions

He goes on to assert that “Such iatrogenic trauma is often the result of poor judgement, laziness, and/or incompetence. Such avoidable mistakes, whether out of ignorance, accident, laziness, or willful disregard for accepted techniques, rules, and/or established guidelines, leave an indelible trauma mark on the person, which can last a lifetime.”

Of the many voices presenting therapy as a panacea, few are physicians or PhDs. Instead, we see these unrealistic, inflated claims mostly from non-experts, from patients to administrators. While they portray therapy as an infallable monolith, those who haven’t found it helpful (and may have found it made their situation worse) are often pushed to the margins. Misinformation about the risks and benefits of therapeutic interventions leaves many patients feeling like incurable failures and makes them less likely to seek help when they truly need it.