Posted by joslynn on July 10, 2006, at 12:06:25
In reply to Re: promoting one's business, posted by Dr. Bob on July 7, 2006, at 9:58:43
My issue with it is that bowtie does not say in all his posts that he is a personal coach. On one post, he will espouse those theories, often to a depressed person, but won't say where he is coming from. The theories often criticize psychotherapy in a way that makes it sound like people who do it are whiney. Then, in separate posts, I have seen him linking to his personal coaching web site. But he didn't tell Michael upfront that's where he was coming from. I think that's the unethical part.
Say I were a pharma rep for lexapro, and somone here came on for advice about prozac. And I posted saying "lexapro is just a blah-blah wimpy drug, what you really need is lexapro" but I never revealed in the post to that person that I was selling lexapro myself and making money off of it.
To me, that wouldn't be ethical.
It's nothing against personal coaching. If someone came on and said "my experience with personal coaching has been great" or "my experience with lexapro is great" that is fine. But for a personal coach to say therapy is not helpful, or for a pharma rep to say prozac is bad, and not to reveal what you do for a living, seems to be a conflict of interest to me.
Remember, bowtie was the same person who used to post as "Dr. Rod" when he wasn't a pdoc. Naturally people thought he was a pdoc with that title and given the nature of this sight. So already there was something misleading from the start.
I am in marketing and advertising, and I know this field. Something here is fishy. For me, I'm in a good place now psychologically, I can kind of chuckle at it all. But when someone is severely depressed, and comes here considering therapy, then gets "advice" from a personal coach against therapy, when they don't know that person is a coach and has posted their business website on here...I think that's wrong.
Think of the pharm rep example and then I think maybe my point will make more sense?
poster:joslynn
thread:663457
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060622/msgs/665713.html