by Our News Desk

A JOBCENTRE was occupied by mental health campaigners in south London yesterday in protest at the Tory government’s plans to make jobseekers accept psychotherapy or face benefit sanctions.

A group of protesters entered Streatham jobcentre and set off a siren, disrupting a meeting and gaining the attention of staff, who clustered at the windows to see the rest of the demonstrators outside, who included members of Psychiatrists Against Austerity and the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

The occupiers went to a top-floor window to unfurl a banner which read: “Back to work therapy is no therapy at all.”

The floor above the centre is where a new £1.9 million Lambeth Community Mental Health Services clinic is set to be opened.

Denise McKenna of the Mental Health Resistance Network told the Star that the protesters were challenged by security and left the building peacefully after being told by staff that they would “be happy to discuss the issue at a later date.”

The Tory manifesto set out that cognitive behavioural therapy would be embedded in the party’s controversial back-to-work programmes while refusers’ benefits would be slashed.

Dr Peter Kinderman, professor of clinical psychology at University of Liverpool, said: “This is particularly ironic given that poverty and social inequality are significant contributory factors to many long-term health and mental-health difficulties in the first place.”

Ms McKenna said that she knew people who would be “terrified” to go to a jobcentre for psychotherapy. “The whole thing stinks, it’s disgusting,” she said.

Green Party work and pensions spokesman Jonathan Bartley said that conducting psychotheraphy in or close to jobcentres is “abusive” and “threatens to undermine the principle of ‘informed consent’ in healthcare.”

He added: “Jobcentres are an entirely inappropriate setting for psychological assessment and treatment. Therapy entered into under any form of coercion, whether it is real or perceived, is not desirable, legitimate or ethical.”

The British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies said it did not “recognise the validity or applicability of generalised psychological explanations of social issues such as joblessness.”