Just Because You Have Celebrity Pals It Doesn’t Mean You Are a Good Therapist
As regular readers of my musings will know, I have a certain issue in the use of celebrity to validate the effectiveness of hypnotherapy. Now, I know some will say that celebrity endorsement is a good thing for the profession. However, if you read the articles, these are not endorsements of hypnotherapy, psychotherapy or other therapies. They are endorsements of specific practitioners. These practitioners often, are not the most extensively qualified therapists in the profession. Also, it would appear that many of these “celebrities” are friends of the therapist they are plugging.
Now, of course, you can say that there is nothing wrong with this. But, I say that it is not an effective way to determine whether something is effective or not, or whether a therapist is effective or not. In my view, full disclosure should be required. In other words, if the person making the endorsement has a relationship which is outside of the therapeutic one it should have to be disclosed. This is similar to the recent issues with people plugging product on Instagram and not saying that they are being paid for it. Transparency in marketing is a hallmark of all good professions, it is something that the hypnotherapy profession needs to embrace.
