4 ms·
I don’t think the author is giving a good faith description of what CBT is. She describes what CBT is and says that is literally the definition on the website,
by cortesoft 5y ago
I don’t think the author is giving a good faith description of what CBT is. She describes what CBT is and says that is literally the definition on the website, and provides a link. However, her description does not match the definition on the website at all. Nowhere does the website suggest that pain is caused by faulty thinking.
It specifically says “Psychological problems are based, in part, on faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking.”
That is in no way saying that all pain is psychological. It also goes out of its way to add “in part”, to show that it isn’t everything even for psychological problems.
I can totally understand that she wasn’t helped by CBT because her problems were not psychological. That doesn’t mean CBT is not effective for actual psychological problems, it means she was misdiagnosed.
This is like writing an essay about how chemo is not an effective treatment and is a scam just because you tried chemo for a toothache and it didn’t work at all.
- DanBC 5y agoBut also, CBT has pretty good evidence base for things that are supposedly purely physical, because of course nothing is either purely physical or psychological. Everything is a complicated mix of both. There's no evidence that she was misdiagnosed. There's some evidence that she holds deeply stigmatizing discriminatory attitudes around mental health.
- SLWW 5y agoThat's what i got from the whole thing. Was gonna come around and talk about it but you hit the nail on the head. I don't trust the account mainly due to the more flippant (sorry i can't think of a better word) treatment of what CBT actually is. I understand why NYT didn't want to use it.