Most people who undertake psychotherapy seem to benefit from it. How do we know? Arguably, the most important evidence comes from meta-analyses that combine the results from many – sometimes hundreds – of randomly controlled trials. Based on this, it’s been estimated that psychotherapy is effective for about 80 per cent of people (meanwhile, between five to 10 per cent of clients may suffer adverse effects).
But now the more concerning news: a team of researchers led by Evangelos Evangelou at the University of Ioannina, Greece has assessed the quality of 247 of these psychotherapy meta-analyses and they report in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica that many of them have serious methodological short-comings.
Coincidentally, a separate research group led by Brent Roberts at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign has just published in Journal of Personality some of the first observational data on how people’s personalities change after undertaking psychotherapy. In contrast to what’s been found in the clinical literature, they report that people who’ve been in therapy seem to show negative changes in personality and other psychological outcomes.
In my opinion the greatest weakness of therapy today is poor therapists. There is also too much of a focus on providing a generalized style of therapy rather than a more individualized approach based on who you are working with and what is most effective for them.
Therapy is a racket. How therapist justify charging upwards of 150.00 per hour is beyond me.
It’s a pseudo science and they suck you right in by making you think you need their help.
You can sit on s therapists couch for the rest of your life and complain as long as you leave a check when you’re through.
I think that question has to be answered on a case by case basis – depending on the patient… and depending on the therapist. No generalization will do here.
I found it helpful initially but there are widespread problems, some of which have already been highlighted:
At the start, therapy often works as the patient is just starting to open up about their problems. This process of telling someone about long hidden issues can be extremely therapeutic. Patient sees the good in telling all. The therapist listens dutifully and patiently.
Eventually, in my experience after about 6-7 sessions, everything turns rather stale and the therapist is barely justifying their high wages.
Woe betide, if after having been a “loyal customer”, you cancel an appointment. They charge you full price and don’t care about what may have caused your absence. And they still think you’ll have trust in them after basically conning you out of the little money you earn.
Their solutions are often repetitive and useless. One had me breathing, wiggling my toes and looking around the room for peaceful objects. Instead of these infantile solutions, what I really needed was a diagnosis or a practical plan to go forward in life.
They love to blame your parents. It’s such an easy hit that it’s almost shameful how many of them still continue to offer up this widely discredited and unhelpful formula of hatred.
Money money money. That’s all they want. As mentioned previously, you could sit there and moan for your entire life and they will gladly keep cashing the cheques.
After a while, I felt incredibly bored by the whole experience. It wasn’t my Dad, I won’t wiggle my toes and I won’t breathe like a beached whale.
There are quacks in every profession. I’ve had good to neutral experiences with therapists all my life and I can say all my life, because I’ve been in them since I was 5 years old due to the divorce. There are sometimes family services in a state where a bunch of therapists are board certified. It is important to have someone who is board certified according to my pdoc. She means for pdocs to in case I had to move and find another one.
I sometimes feel like I’m not accomplishing much in therapy, but whenever I try to go longer than a month between visits, I start to have more symptoms. Eventually, my therapist learned to just keep me coming back every month, even if it feels like I have no real problems to discuss.
There have been some studies indicating greater frequently of check ins can help prevent relapses. Although that could probably be done by a nurse. Some people also don’t get much human contact. I think so much of it depends on the patient, the therapist, and the type and severity of illness.
Talk therapy never did much for me. I found it hard to find things to talk about for an hour and its not like it helps the fact that u have schizophrenia
Talk therapy helped me more than anything else. It opened my eyes to reality. Neither meds nor socializing did that for me. I don’t say therapy is a miracle, but it made me realize I was being delusional. I will keep my therapy for as long as I can find it useful. It helped me too with the brutal anger and lack of confidence that I developed as a result of the meds (the med helped me, yes, but it damaged me a lot too). Without therapy, I wouldn’t have sustained my meds.
@Erez_Shmerling there is no substitute for natural human interaction(not forced) like in therapy.
I’ve been talking to a therapist for a whole two years now and it has not helped my social skills one bit. In fact it’s turned me into a mushy ball of jello on my insides
You can’t make friends with “the help”. They may act like your friend but they will always resent you for having more than them.
I just had a little interaction with my sisters nanny and my nephew. I realized how alone I have been for a very long time. I am also hurt very deeply from having this psychotic illness for so long.
I know that you are young. I pray that they find a way to help us before we get too old. I’ve been sick for 15 years. It went fast and left a deep scar that can only be healed with love and connections with others.
@MeghillaGorilla1 I am young, have been ill for 3.5 years.
It is good that you had this interactions.
I understand that you are hurt, but try to get contact with real people( rather than therapists), it will be much better.
For me, I am a very active person, I had a plan to go to a TV channel to talk about my plight,
it will probably not pan out. I may try some measures to raise awareness of schizophrenia.
I think that one of the problems is that currently I don’t practice what I preach, I exercise very well
but apart from it I sit too much at the forum and at home and not do enough.
I have to get out of the house more,make friends, try to study. Today I tried to study some math, am happy for that.
When I first got sick at 24 I didn’t believe that it was real. I still went out a lot, socialized and went to the gym. I had a harder time relating to people than I did before the illness but I still tried. I had profound negative symptoms back then(which I don’t have now). They actually went away and I was symptom free for some time. As I got older I began to have more episodes more frequently and my confidence was destroyed. I am picking myself up for the very last time now with a wonderful doctor. But yea one cannot fully recover without other people in their life and family is not enough.
Awareness is good. Maybe you could become an advocate for people with the illness who don’t speak so well since you seem to communicate effectively.
It’s very tragic that our lives were cut short but we are only failures if we stop trying. There are ways to be successfull and lighten other people’s lives even if you have become ill with something.
Good luck if you take this to tv. There is a big stigma here in the US and while people say that it’s getting better, maybe it is I guess.
Yes. Very much so. Personally, I didn’t benefit much from psychotherapy, but that was probably due to my personality type. I intellectualize everything. My emotions are hardly ever expressed.
I never had any good outcomes from therapy. So, I quit going and that’s when I got better. And I went to therapy for years and years. My poor son didn’t benefit from therapy either. He was in therapy when he committed suicide.