ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on developments of some editorials for the European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling. The R. Layard report can be seen as having two great successes: the first is to convincingly put the case for the talking therapies when previously medication would have been prescribed and the second is to have also persuaded the government that mental health needs to be treated on a population basis. With the aforementioned commodification of education and the increasingly dominant role of the state in determining what counselling and psychotherapy is provided for publicly, there are two further important effects. Firstly, the trainings are now, at least in the UK, increasingly coming with university degrees in counselling and psychotherapy; and particularly in counselling psychology, the students are hoping to get publically funded careers. Secondly, the public is being influenced to increasingly seek out, at least in the first instance, such evidence-based approaches in private practices.
