{"id":358,"date":"2019-05-02T19:29:40","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T19:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/?p=358"},"modified":"2019-05-02T19:29:40","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T19:29:40","slug":"psychotherapy-attacked-from-within-profession-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/psychotherapy-attacked-from-within-profession-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"psychotherapy attacked from within profession &#8211; fake news!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A professor of psychology astoundingly claimed in the Washington Post that psychotherapy doesn&#8217;t work, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">despite all the research proving it does<\/span>.\u00a0 \u00a0I wrote a rebuttal and the Post printed it.\u00a0 This is important stuff at any time, but especially now when clever and\/or aggressive diatribes often substitute for actual information.\u00a0 My rebuttal contains the facts, and I reproduce it here along with an additional paragraph they omitted for space considerations.\u00a0 (But if you want to see it in context, it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/readers-critique-the-post-valerie-jarrett-tiger-woods-and-another-snub-of-female-athletes\/2019\/04\/26\/bb563922-6849-11e9-82ba-fcfeff232e8f_story.html?utm_term=.01ef53e57bea\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 Search &#8220;Pologe&#8221; and you&#8217;ll find it about half way down.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Talk about confirmation bias.\u00a0 To support his bizarre inclusion of \u201ctalking about your problems helps\u201d as a \u201cmyth\u201d in his April 14 Outlook essay \u201cFive myths: Psychology,\u201d Stephen Ilardi\u00a0quotes\u00a0a meta-analysis of one group-debriefing program as evidence that the \u201ctalking cure\u201d doesn\u2019t work, and a single study of another, similar debriefing program, this time for traffic accident victims.\u00a0 These two studies are hardly representative of psychotherapy research and they are studying a very circumscribed intervention:\u00a0 Short-term, structured group counseling.\u00a0\u00a0Has\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Ilardi not seen any of the hundreds of\u00a0studies and\u00a0meta-studies \u2014 covering far more than the infinitesimal sample of psychotherapy outcome research\u00a0he cites\u2014 that consistently show\u00a0psychotherapy to be\u00a0at least as effective as medication for mild to moderate presentations of many different mental disorders?<\/p>\n<p>Psychotherapy takes longer to work, the research shows, but its benefits last longer and there are many fewer side effects and complications.\u00a0 As far as Dr. Ilardi&#8217;s claim for the superiority of &#8220;evidenced-based&#8221; procedures, well the evidence &#8211; the research &#8211; consistently shows that comparisons between different psychotherapies usually end in tie scores; no technique emerges as better.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Dr. Ilardi&#8217;s claim that psychotherapy works about half the time, if that&#8217;s even an accurate figure, means that you&#8217;ll have to find the right person and make a little effort to see the process through.\u00a0 Psychotherapy is &#8211; and no one ever said otherwise &#8211; not like medicine wherein you can at least sometimes be put to sleep or take a pill, and then without more effort on your part emerge cured.\u00a0 By the way, psychiatric medications don&#8217;t work all the time either; and as far as making people worse most of us recall what happened with Prozac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A professor of psychology astoundingly claimed in the Washington Post that psychotherapy doesn&#8217;t work, despite all the research proving it does.\u00a0 \u00a0I wrote a rebuttal and the Post printed it.\u00a0 This is important stuff at any time, but especially now &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/psychotherapy-attacked-from-within-profession-fake-news\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":359,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}