Getting your wording right on your website and promotions is a big deal. Not only can the CAP Committee of Advertising Practice and ASA Advertising Standards Agency come after you and force a change or shut you down; making unproven claims or any sort of misrepresentation by current mainstream standards also goes against the EFTMRA Code of Ethics in many different ways.
You might want to specialise in working with people who happen to also be living with a current medical condition. In every instance of marketing that a potential client may see, it is essential to stress that you work with people who ‘happen to have that condition’ in support of their positivity, resilience, emotional grounding, coping skills, forgiveness, etc and to avoid (and disclaim) any reference or suggestion that your work might result in healing, curing, or relieving the condition itself.
In general the ASA likes to work with a big stick, bypassing chatty, informal resolution and going straight for public rulings and bans for any media (e.g. TV ads, paid Facebook ads, YouTube ads, website content, radio ads, magazine ads etc) concerning medicines, remedies and therapies that:
The ASA and CAP appear to take a highly mechanistic stance and to divide conditions up into symptoms and states. For example while a herbal remedy company may, with sufficient evidence, market a cream for ‘Arthritic Pain’, it can not present this as a treatment for Arthritis.
From this perspective the pain is a symptom but arthritis itself is a state that requires medical intervention.
The ASA concedes that practitioners of psychology (for example, psychotherapy, behavioural therapy, counselling) can probably treat a small handful of ailments including grief, anxiety and depression. As an EFT practitioner with no CBT or Counselling training your best bet is to address them, support or enable people who are living with them, but avoid and decry any suggestion that you treat them.
If you would like more precise detail and to research for yourself, a good place to start is Section 12, clauses 1 and 2 of the CAP code, available on the ASA website. A document I heavily referred to in producing this article is in the ASA Resource Library: (Advertising Guidance: non-broadcast: Health, beauty, slimming and medical conditions 2008).
If you would like to jump to the punch and see all the forbidden words laid out by type on two A4 colour-coded tables, then I have a workbook available, shortly to become part of Package 1 - Starting Out.
Here is a tiny comparison chart I created between a very small number of the conditions we cannot claim to help (conditions for which suitably qualified medical advice should be sought) - 'Medical Only', and ones we may be able to, (conditions for which evidence could be sought by the ASA or CAP) , just to give a flavour of how tight the distinctions are. P = treatable with psychology, as above. M = treatable with manipulation eg osteopathy, physiotherapy, or chiropractic.
You might want to specialise in working with people who happen to also be living with a current medical condition. In every instance of marketing that a potential client may see, it is essential to stress that you work with people who ‘happen to have that condition’ in support of their positivity, resilience, emotional grounding, coping skills, forgiveness, etc and to avoid (and disclaim) any reference or suggestion that your work might result in healing, curing, or relieving the condition itself.
In general the ASA likes to work with a big stick, bypassing chatty, informal resolution and going straight for public rulings and bans for any media (e.g. TV ads, paid Facebook ads, YouTube ads, website content, radio ads, magazine ads etc) concerning medicines, remedies and therapies that:
- misleadingly imply capacity to prevent, treat or cure
- discourage or appear to discourage essential treatment for conditions for which medical advice should be sought, or
- for which the business holds no evidence to support claims of any result
The ASA and CAP appear to take a highly mechanistic stance and to divide conditions up into symptoms and states. For example while a herbal remedy company may, with sufficient evidence, market a cream for ‘Arthritic Pain’, it can not present this as a treatment for Arthritis.
From this perspective the pain is a symptom but arthritis itself is a state that requires medical intervention.
The ASA concedes that practitioners of psychology (for example, psychotherapy, behavioural therapy, counselling) can probably treat a small handful of ailments including grief, anxiety and depression. As an EFT practitioner with no CBT or Counselling training your best bet is to address them, support or enable people who are living with them, but avoid and decry any suggestion that you treat them.
If you would like more precise detail and to research for yourself, a good place to start is Section 12, clauses 1 and 2 of the CAP code, available on the ASA website. A document I heavily referred to in producing this article is in the ASA Resource Library: (Advertising Guidance: non-broadcast: Health, beauty, slimming and medical conditions 2008).
If you would like to jump to the punch and see all the forbidden words laid out by type on two A4 colour-coded tables, then I have a workbook available, shortly to become part of Package 1 - Starting Out.
Here is a tiny comparison chart I created between a very small number of the conditions we cannot claim to help (conditions for which suitably qualified medical advice should be sought) - 'Medical Only', and ones we may be able to, (conditions for which evidence could be sought by the ASA or CAP) , just to give a flavour of how tight the distinctions are. P = treatable with psychology, as above. M = treatable with manipulation eg osteopathy, physiotherapy, or chiropractic.
Reading between the lines from the examples given by on the ASA website, it does seem that if the condition doesn't have a P appended (or a similar code to indicate either manipulation, hypnotherapy or acupuncture), then the expectation is that everything else not requiring medical advice will still be treated with some sort of tablet or lotion.
Migraines for example - the migraine headaches may individually be treated as they arise using herbal remedies or over the counter medications, but that is symptom management. It is assumed that Migraine is an ongoing condition, and that only a doctor can do anything about it.
Probably for that reason, if you take a permissible term from the second list such as migraine headaches, or grief, anxiety or tension and prefix it with a word like chronic, serious, or persistent, then you are still likely to land in hot water.
This article relates to the law. There is a little about questionable marketing (legally permissible FOMO/pain-point tactics) and how they can backfire, in the article on Pitching.
Colour coded easy-read charts of all the conditions listed by the CAP coming soon.
Migraines for example - the migraine headaches may individually be treated as they arise using herbal remedies or over the counter medications, but that is symptom management. It is assumed that Migraine is an ongoing condition, and that only a doctor can do anything about it.
Probably for that reason, if you take a permissible term from the second list such as migraine headaches, or grief, anxiety or tension and prefix it with a word like chronic, serious, or persistent, then you are still likely to land in hot water.
This article relates to the law. There is a little about questionable marketing (legally permissible FOMO/pain-point tactics) and how they can backfire, in the article on Pitching.
Colour coded easy-read charts of all the conditions listed by the CAP coming soon.