Old News: Psyche reports on quotas

A man tells the story of catching up with some friends socially, where a frank discussion of the career path for Australian psychologists ensues.
Such frank discussion is rare outside the closed chambers of the psyche profession. The saddest fact is the admonitions are confirmation, not revelation. What is exposed here is notorious to the general public, even those who have never been to court.

To an observer, it is not surprising that Australians have a jaundiced and cynical view of the psychology profession. The ethics of psychology in Australia more closely resemble the arguments for working at McDonald's than a responsible profession.
This sort of institutionalized and socialized prejudice has produced a profile of Australia as a truly sick society. Imagine, if you will, a nation where 97% of fathers are unfit to raise their own children. - Yet that is the goal of the quotas in reporting, based on the experience of one frank commentator within the profession.

Caught up with mate today at a small social gathering and one the folks there was a psych in private practice.

His comments and observations were interesting.

He claims that all well paying/regular paying psych work means the psych must agree in advance as to the outcomes the customer is seeking. In the event it is a Govt department or a private insurer or whatever, the psych is required to produce a predetermined ratio of outcomes.

If the psych wants the work, and some of it is very lucrative, they are effectively forced to only seek out and record information that suits the required outcome. If the psych doesn't like it then the customer will have no trouble finding another psych who happily will do it.

He gave examples.
Workers seeking disability payments due to mental stress. The insurer would only accept a rate of one in ten regardless of merit.
He explained it was not always easy to produce the outcomes and if he has a person who displays say twenty symptoms of stress and only two behaviors that do not indicate stress then he must concentrate and report on the the two non stress indicators just so the person's application can be disqualified.

He refuses to do Government work and especially Family Court work.
He recalls Court work required him to pre-agree to produce reports which favoured the primary care giver or the lowest income earner of the marriage. He alleged he was only permitted to report negatively on mothers if they were drug dependent to the point of complete dysfunctionality.

The trouble with this predetermined system is that litigants are unaware of the predetermined quota arrangements and therefore unaware of the corruption of professional evaluation and independence.

How would it look in the family court as soon as the psyche was called as a witness. " Ms. Stare-Decisis, "I understand you are required by the govt to produce reports favouring mothers and disparaging fathers in %97 of all cases".

In a proper legal process, the judge would have no option but to dismiss these reports as biased and contaminated. (Comment by the psychologist, in summary.)