Summary: The Effects Of Psychotherapy

The idea of using talk therapy as a way of alleviating the suffering associated with mental health issues is one that has been thoroughly researched over the years, as people have made efforts to determine whether or not psychotherapy is an effective treatment, which types of therapy are most effective, and what are the elements of therapy that make it an effective strategy for dealing with mental health. While this is valuable information, it would be well to consider that there are some problems with measuring the effectiveness of psychotherapy.

Many have interpreted Eysenck’s 1952 article ‘The Effects of Psychotherapy: An Evaluation’ as an argument that psychotherapy does not work, but more recent analyses of his figures show that the therapies …show more content…
While there have been studies that have shown some psychotherapies to be more effective than others, this has largely been because of investigator allegiance, as researchers are often interested in proving the validity of theories they agree with than they are in proving the validity of competing ideas. When investigator allegiance has been controlled for they’ve all been found to be more or less equally effective (Luborksy et al. …show more content…
Shedler, 2010, argues that ‘The goals of psychodynamic therapy include, but extend beyond, alleviation of acute symptoms. Psychological health is not merely the absence of symptoms; it is the positive presence of inner capacities and resources that allow people to live life with a greater sense of freedom and possibility. Symptom-oriented outcome measures commonly used in outcome studies do not attempt to assess such inner capacities.’ As someone who is partial to a therapy that is more interested in addressing the underlying cause of the symptoms, Shedler is likely not confident about the lasting effectiveness of types of therapy that really only deal with surface level