A ban on using any method to recover memories of child abuse has been imposed on members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. They face a series of sanctions if they persist in using the controversial techniques to treat their patients.
The publication of professional guidelines comes after months of internal arguments over details contained in a report on recovered memory, which will not now be published until next year.
Psychiatrists who continue to use methods to unearth memories of past sexual abuse would ultimately face being reported to the General Medical Council for professional misconduct.
The RCP regulates the training of psychiatrists and admits doctors to its membership. Sanctions would include removing training status from senior psychiatrists, removing doctors from membership and reporting psychiatrists to the GMC, said Prof Sydney Brandon, a fellow the college and convenor of the report, Reported Recovered Memories of Child Sexual Abuse.
When the specialist sections of the royal college failed to agree on the full report, commissioned in 1994, it was agreed that guidelines taken from it would be published instead. The agreed guidelines published today have become college policy.
When the report is published next year, it will not be as a college document but as a paper signed by individual authors. Nonetheless the guidelines are firmly against the practice of “recovering memory” because of concerns that the techniques employed can give rise to strongly-held false memories and lead to false accusations. So-called false memory syndrome has led to adults making uncorroborated reports of childhood sexual abuse by fathers and other people years after the alleged events.
The royal college guidelines say there is no evidence that recovered memory techniques can reveal memory of real events or accurately elaborate factual information about past experiences.
The guidelines say that psychiatrists should resist “vigorously” moves by adult patients to report allegations or suspicions to the authorities. Telling the police of “spontaneous reports” by children or adolescents of recent or current allegations is mandatory, psychiatrists are reminded.
Prof Brandon said yesterday: “It is the aim of this report [the guidelines] to provide our members and fellows with balanced and practical guidance with a view to promoting good practice. We clearly came to the conclusion that it is possible in the intense relationship that can develop between a therapist and a patient to produce entirely false memory.”
Dr Sheilagh Davies, chairman of the college’s Faculty of Psychotherapy, one of the sections unhappy with the original report, said: “Events in people’s lives do trigger memories. In therapy, memories can arise which it is impossible to corroborate The guidelines take a common sense approach.”
Celia Hall is medical editor of the London Daily Telegraph where this article first appeared (October 1, 1997).
