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Kevin comments on Open Thread: June 2010 - Less Wrong
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As a start, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy is a branch of psychotherapy with some respect around here because of the evidence that it sometimes works, compared to the other fields of psychotherapy with no evidence.
Do they really have such a poor track record? I know some scientists have very little respect for the "soft" sciences, but sociologist can at least make generalizations from studies done on large scales. Psychotherapy makes a lot of people incredulous, but iis it really fair to say that most methods in practice today are ~0% effective?
Yes this is essentially a post stating my incredulity. Would you mind quelling it?
It's not that they're 0% effective, it's that they're not much more effective than placebo therapy (i.e. being put on a waiting list for therapy), or keeping a journal.
CBT is somewhat more effective, but I've also heard that it's not as effective for high-ruminators... i.e., people who already obsess about their thinking.
Scientific medicine is difficult and expensive. I worry that the apparent success of CBT may be because methodological compromises needed to make the research practical happen to flatter CBT more than they flatter other approaches.
I might be worrying about the wrong thing. Do we know anything about the usefulness of Prozac in treating depression? Since we turn a blind eye to the unblinding of all our studies by the sexual side-effects of Prozac, and also refuse to consider the direct impact of those side-effects it could be argued that we don't actually have any scientific knowledge of the effectiveness of the drug.
The claim I've seen associated with Robyn Dawes is that therapy is useful (which I read as "more useful than being on a waiting list"), but that untrained therapists are just as good as those trained under most methods. (ETA: and, contrary to Kevin, they have been tested and found wanting)
It's not that other forms of psychotherapy are scientifically shown to be 0% effective; it's just that evidence-based psychotherapy is a surprisingly recent field. Psychotherapy can still work even if some fields of it have not had rigorous studies showing their effectiveness... but you might as well go with a therapist that has training in a field of psychotherapy that has some scientific method behind it.
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=13023&cn=5