What I was expecting from the first paragraph was a discussion of whether therapy works. I think people should know that when it’s been studied, there’s little evidence that talk therapy works better than getting support from a friend, family member, or other trusted person.
Wikipedia defines the dodo bird verdict as “the claim that all empirically validated psychotherapies, regardless of their specific components, produce equivalent outcomes”, which is noticeably different than “talking to a friend produces equivalent outcomes to therapy”. They can both be true, but I don’t think they’re the same thing.
the claim that all empirically validated psychotherapies, regardless of their specific components, produce equivalent outcomes
I think when you aggregate the difference in effectiveness between different schools of therapies for different sorts of mental illnesses fades away. The reality is different schools of therapy are good for different types of illnesses, disorders or just unhappiness in general. I can see CBT being helpful in some cases. But I find the notion that someone, who has been abused for years during their developmental period, can be cured or even improved by few months of very structured and (simplistic) CBT therapy sessions is simply preposterous. For very simple truma I can definitely see CBT or similar manualized therapy being effective. For complex trauma, you will need years of comibnation of relational, interpersonal, humanisitc, existential, psychodynamic, somatic or neuro-science based therapy.
To sum up, it all depends on what kind of issues clients want to resolve. Specific types of therapies will be more effective for specific types of issues.
Better known as the ‘dodo bird verdict’...
Wikipedia defines the dodo bird verdict as “the claim that all empirically validated psychotherapies, regardless of their specific components, produce equivalent outcomes”, which is noticeably different than “talking to a friend produces equivalent outcomes to therapy”. They can both be true, but I don’t think they’re the same thing.
Similar definitions from study.com, Scientific American, some journal
I think when you aggregate the difference in effectiveness between different schools of therapies for different sorts of mental illnesses fades away. The reality is different schools of therapy are good for different types of illnesses, disorders or just unhappiness in general. I can see CBT being helpful in some cases. But I find the notion that someone, who has been abused for years during their developmental period, can be cured or even improved by few months of very structured and (simplistic) CBT therapy sessions is simply preposterous. For very simple truma I can definitely see CBT or similar manualized therapy being effective. For complex trauma, you will need years of comibnation of relational, interpersonal, humanisitc, existential, psychodynamic, somatic or neuro-science based therapy.
To sum up, it all depends on what kind of issues clients want to resolve. Specific types of therapies will be more effective for specific types of issues.
I’m confused why this is a response to my comment, which was not an argument for or against the dodo bird verdict but about definitions.