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To prove psychotherapy is effective for depression, you would have to gather up thousands of people with clinical depression, give half therapy and let the othe
by yummyfajitas 10y ago
To prove psychotherapy is effective for depression, you would have to gather up thousands of people with clinical depression, give half therapy and let the others go it alone, which raises serious ethical questions and makes it difficult to find volunteers
This is no different from an RCT drug trial.
I agree that a blind study is impossible. But yes, I would still love to see randomized trials comparing an actor to a real psychiatrist (as well as to nothing at all). At the very least, if actors are equally effective, we can save billions of dollars by replacing expensive psychiatrists with struggling actors.
The problem with correlation studies - particularly for subjective in-my-head issues - is that the thing which causes people to see a shrink might also be causing them to get better.
- openasocket 10y agoI'd really recommend the link another poster gave: http://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-psychotherapy.aspx http://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-psychotherapy.asp... There's a lot of studies listed there, including a bunch of RCTs, mostly comparing different types of therapy. I couldn't find any attempting to use a "placebo" therapy, but I only really skimmed it. Does that help?
- wu-ikkyu 10y agoYour original post that I wanted to reply to walk flagged so ill do so here. You might like this lecture by Alan Watts: >While there are indeed individuals who are certainly able to perform psychotherapy, it is the sheerest arrogance for anybody to say that he is officially qualified to do so. We do not know how it is done, just as we do no know how musical, literary, and artistic genius is done. Alan Watts - Western Psychology vs World Religions https://youtu.be/-LzJlTCaV9U https://youtu.be/-LzJlTCaV9U