We have reached 6000 signatures thanks to your support in voicing your demand to keep free choice for health care options available to all Ontarians. As you will see in this in this latest update, we need your financial assistance more than ever to continue to educate practitioners and clients and continue this fight for your right to choose. Please contribute as generously as you can at www.StopPsychotherapyTakeover.ca We are hearing from many Body Talk, NLP and Reiki practitioners, Shamans, Hypnotists, Family therapists and Spiritual counselors who are confused about what this legislation means. We will try to explain it clearly here: Legislation by the Regulated Health Professions Act has now made the assessment and treatment of emotional, cognitive, thinking, reasoning, social functioning, communication and mental issues, by verbal and non-verbal means, a ‘controlled act of psychotherapy’. The two most important aspects of any practice - assessment and treatment - have been made illegal unless one is a registered psychotherapist with the College. While the new College of Psychotherapy of Ontario states that it does not intend to regulate alternative and holistic practitioners, it also emphasizes ‘AS LONG AS’ one doesn't engage in assessments and treatments of human disturbances. However, there is nothing that anyone can work with that does not fall into one of those categories, including sadness, grief, stuttering, shyness, addictions, P.T.S.D. and so on. While the legislation refers to ‘psychotherapeutic means’, ‘serious conditions’, and ‘psychotherapy’, the College is adamant it will not define any terms; the College will prosecute and let the Courts decide. Thus any treatment method can be deemed a ‘psychotherapeutic technique’ at any time, regardless how either you or I think psychotherapy should be defined. To cover all of their bases, a new psychotherapeutic profession has been created called “spiritual psychotherapist”. All counseling has been reduced to what amounts to ‘administrative tasks’ only, with treatments restricted to those counselors registered with the College. The bottom line is that control of all assessments and treatments of human issues is now in the hands of one College. This removes public choice entirely, in violation of their right to choose their own practitioners and treatments. Psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and drug companies were acutely aware by 2005-2006 when this all started, that the public was losing interest in their ‘medical model’ of treatment that involves little ‘healing’ and much dogma, theory and drugs. The estimated out-of-pocket spending on alternative medicine in Canada in the latter half of 2005 and first half of 2006 alone, (if money spent on self-help books, medical equipment, herbs, vitamins, and special diet programs is included) amounts to an estimated $7.84 billion, and that figure is already eight years old. What they did to protect their turf was to use undemocratic legislation to eliminate their completion, on the pretext of ‘protecting the public’, when in fact the public is really harmed by elimination of free choice. Please visit www.stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca to subscribe to updates, the latest news, see available downloads and to donate to this cause. Please be aware that if you donate through Change.org you are donating to the organization that hosts these petitions and not to this campaign. Thank you