Apparently their standard procedure was to refer her to the phone counseling, as the Telegraph article stated. They didn't say whether it was done in-house or if she was just given the number to call on her own.

This is an area where I am a bit ambivalent. I think that counseling should be required, but I also see that a certain amount of personal responsibility has to come into play here. I will openly agree that her history of anxiety and depression compromised her ability to properly care for herself though.

Her doctor wanted her to get counseling after the fact. She would not.

I have known and worked with a lot of people that have issues with depression and anxiety. I am, by no means, an expert but that is my educated guess. With the depression, negativity becomes the main way that people interpret things. I don't know this to be a fact, but based on how I have seen people react, I think that I have a good idea.

The purpose of such counseling (this is my opinion mind you) is to determine whether or not this woman wants to go through with the procedure and is competent to make such a decision. It is not to determine if she can handle it. By putting that requirement in, then it creates the 'no one cares how I feel about this' problem if the counselor thinks that she can't.


There are no medical procedures that I know of that require a minimum of two counseling sessions. This woman should have been in counseling for the problems that she was presenting but was not. Unfortunately a lot of doctors are simply prescribing meds when a psychiatrist/psychologist should have been called in. Clearly this is a problem un the UK just like here.