Vic: Self help courses can cause problems for some

AAP General News (Australia)
12-13-2009
Vic: Self help courses can cause problems for some

By Greg Roberts

MELBOURNE, Dec 13 AAP - A coroner's finding this week that a self-help course was to
blame for a 34-year-old woman jumping to her death from a Sydney office window has raised
questions about the regulation of such courses.

The story of Rebekah Lawrence stripping naked and killing herself after completing
the Turning Point course brought back painful memories for two Melbourne people who attended
self-help courses and were badly affected.

Neither person had suffered mental health issues previously.

The case follows an inquest into the suicide of Queensland soldier and Scientologist
Edward McBride and calls for an inquiry into the church's activities.

Self help can range from something simple like listening to motivators to its extreme
edge which Ms Lawrence's husband David Booth said involved "unqualified people doing damaging
things to people's minds".

Melbourne man John broke down and cried while speaking about the day he thought about
killing himself after completing self-help group Landmark Education's Forum course.

"I considered very seriously the notion of taking myself out because I couldn't live
with the anxiety, that's why I got upset talking to you," John, who does not want his
surname published, told AAP.

Global company Landmark, which has no connection to Turning Point, attracted controversy
in a 2004 French documentary in which leader Alain Roth was secretly filmed berating a
mother and telling her she would be better off dead.

John was 40 when he paid $500 to do the Forum and was happy, owned a successful pharmacy
and had a wife and four young children.

He attended their South Melbourne offices relaxed and open-minded.

He found himself in a room with several hundred people, being urged to embrace Landmark's
'curriculum for living' and achieve a "breakthrough in the technology of living powerfully".

However, he felt uncomfortable about presenters publicly abusing and embarrassing people,
especially those who disagreed with them.

"You are standing up on a Sunday with a couple of hundred strangers and people were
admitting that they'd been abused as children, or were abusers of children, had been raped,
had been molested," he told AAP.

He did the homework, phoning people to be 'truthful and authentic' with, but actually
upset an ex-girlfriend from his teenage years, a former boss with whom he'd fallen out
and his own mother.

"The crux of this weekend was that life is empty and meaningless and it is empty and
meaningless that life is empty and meaningless," he said.

He says such mantras became a "monkey on my shoulder" that he filtered all his thoughts through.

"I wasn't me anymore," he said.

He visited Landmark, where staff told him he was fine.

However, he soon suffered a complete mental breakdown, was diagnosed with severe anxiety
and post traumatic stress disorder, saw a psychiatrist and says he will take anti-depressant
medication for the rest of his life.

"I remember driving home and I was in such a state I couldn't find my way home, I had
to ring my wife Anne up and say I'm lost, and I was crying," he said.

Melbourne man Justin Hamman, who was 25 when he did the course several years ago, felt
angry and abandoned.

Two psychologists he saw later told him Forum broke down his social boundaries and
what he considered normal.

"What really stuffed me up was that they questioned the idea of good and bad, it just
depended on what society you were living in," he told AAP.

"They said 'well Hitler wasn't really bad', and a guy nearly ripped them to pieces
over that but they just manipulated the situation and said: 'look at this aggression,
you must not get along with your kids'."

Mr Hamman said he didn't sleep for two days with his mind racing and missed two weeks of work.

"I freaked out about these ideas and I asked a Landmark lady 'look, what if I was to,
hypothetically kick a dog, would that be good or bad?'," he said.

"She got freaked out by my question, asked me if I had ever had bi-polar disorder or
was screwed up or something, called me a taxi and said that I could get my money back,
which I got in the mail as a cheque."

But plenty of people benefit from self-help courses.

Melbourne woman Kate Al Hassan found it an empowering experience that taught her to
be honest with herself and which she still incorporates into her daily life years later.

The pharmacist and mother of two even persuaded her devout Muslim husband to attend
Forum as "I thought he needed to do it to free himself and grow up, so we were on the
same level of communication".

"I was in a frenzy afterward, I got my closest friends, my husband and family to do
it," she told AAP.

"Empty and meaningless helps you see the big picture, gives you freedom to let go of
all the drama and see the significance of what happened to you when you were young."

Landmark argues that, unlike Turning Point, its programs are educational, not therapeutic,
and therefore any wellbeing problems are not their fault.

If someone was in strife they would be looked after, said one senior Landmark representative.

"While a person can have a negative response while attending a film or being at a sporting
event or listening to a lecture, the events they attended were not the cause of their
illness," she said in a written statement.

"An overwhelming 94 per cent (of health experts) agree that Landmark Educations programs
are professionally conducted and provide great value."

The company has filed lawsuits against critics such as American counsellor Rick Ross,
whose website features articles, studies and letters critical of Landmark and other groups.

In a 3,000-word letter Landmark requested AAP to "reconsider doing an article on Landmark
Education" because of "compelling independent research" showing it was an industry leader.

The company has been named one of the top training and development program providers
in the world by human resources website HR.com/James McNeil.

NSW's Deputy State Coroner Malcolm MacPherson this week recommended regulations and
accreditation to restrict counselling and psychotherapy services to those with relevant
tertiary qualifications.

AAP gr/pmu/mo

KEYWORD: SELFHELP (AAP NEWSFEATURE) (PIC AVAILABLE)

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