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Re: scientific research » Ilene

Posted by pegasus on July 27, 2004, at 22:36:50

In reply to Re: scientific research, posted by Ilene on July 27, 2004, at 17:32:52

> That makes it terribly difficult to decide whether to start psychotherapy and what kind of therapist to look for.

Yes it does, unfortunately. We're often left needing to use criteria other than scientific evidence. Having hard studies would be easier. And yet in the real world, we often don't.

> CBT is supposedly the only kind that's been shown to work. I don't know if that's because it's fairly structured, so it's easier to quantify, because it just happens to have been studied more, whether it actually is superior, or for other reasons. There are certainly people who have "failed" CBT, or rather, CBT has failed them.

Right, exactly. CBT has some evidence to back it up, and it certainly does seem to help, especially for depression. But it doesn't seem to work for everyone and every type of problem. Too bad.

> How did you decide on those treatments?

Well, I used my common sense and my gut feelings. I looked around a lot to find a therapist that felt right to me, and a method that made sense to me. And I checked in with myself frequently to see if I thought I was making progress, and still finding the process to make sense. Sorry, I wish there was some easier, more systematic way to find it. But the good news is that this way of finding good therapy does seem to work at least sometimes. It's a lot harder, I would guess, when if one doesn't trust their gut feelings about things.

> Of course I realize that other people have their own criteria for making decisions, but I think it's important to be an educated consumer. I'm the person who always reads Consumer Reports before buying anything. I read opposing political opinions, too.

Yes, I would agree with this. I was also encouraged by the Consumer Reports study of psychotherapy methods a while back which showed that all the methods they examined (including CBT) gave fairly equivalent positive results. This doesn't prove anything - because it could be that everyone they asked naturally got better on their own with time. But it's possible also that engaging in any type of psychotherapy can be helpful. Some people consider that this study may indicate that having a therapeutic relationship is what is helpful, and not so much the exact things that you do during therapy.

I think we fundamentally agree. I guess maybe I'm more interested in exploring outside the bounds of what research can show me. But I'm not saying that research is useless.

pegasus

 

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