Warn the general public of the dangers represented by sectarian excesses in the field of health. This is the objective of the prevention campaign launched on November 3 by the CCMM.
Charlatans, gurus … medicine is no exception to the scourge of sectarian aberrations. From psychotherapists without a diploma to dubious so-called “experimental” practices, these abuses represent real dangers for the health of vulnerable patients who are more and more numerous to resort to them. In this context, the Center Against Mental Manipulations (CCMM) has just launched a prevention campaign to warn patients against this type of practice.
Seniors represent “easy prey”
” Danger ! Beware of medical treatments and false therapists ”. This is the shocking message of this campaign launched on November 3 in partnership with the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Drifts (Miviludes) and the Ministry of Health. According to Laure Telo, president of the CCMM, “we are witnessing the explosion of a multitude of small structures that escape guard rails. A fertile ground to capture the easy prey that are the suffering patients. These “easy prey” particularly designate people aged 80 and over.
Multiple dangers
The biggest abuses are among psychotherapists. According to figures from the Milivudes in fact, more than 4000 self-proclaimed psychotherapists in France have not received any training and do not appear on any official register. The advice given can be devastating for the patient. For example, suddenly stopping treatment to treat severe depression, in the name of rejection of traditional methods, can be life threatening.
This risk also applies to cancer patients: vulnerable, they may be tempted to stop their chemotherapy. According to Miviludes, 60% of these patients have already turned to these sectarian practices.
A seductive speech
For Serge Blisko, president of Miviludes, recourse to these practices is the result of an extremely well-established communication strategy and of an attractive discourse for a sick patient: “if we tell a cancer patient that he will not lose hair and that the treatment will have no side effects, he will inevitably be more seduced than by the speech of a surgeon announcing a heavy operation without guarantee of being saved, ”he explains.
Do part of it
Fortunately, there is not a sectarian group behind each therapeutic drift, underlines the president of Miviludes. The whole difficulty is to distinguish between a beneficial complementary therapy, for example in the fight against pain, and a miracle method that can hide a sectarian drift.
For Serge Blisko, it is necessary to worry when the “therapist” imposes to substitute his method for the conventional treatments followed until then. “It’s all the difference between complementary therapy and an alternative. When one pushes a patient of cancer to stop his chemotherapy by convincing him that his disease results from a psychological trauma of a family nature as in the “new Germanic medicine” or that one advises him to prefer the fruit juice or a method laying on of hands like reiki, there is great danger, ”insisted the president of the Mission.
Doctors must participate in this prevention
The medical profession also has a role to play in informing the general public. The French people overwhelmingly trust their attending physician but very rarely discuss with him the complementary therapies they have recourse to. “If mainstream physicians made the effort to understand their patients’ need for complementary therapies and stopped mocking the subject, they could open the dialogue and play a valuable role in helping their patients discern dangerous practices, ”emphasizes Serge Blisko, himself a trained doctor.
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