Just like SSRI “antidepressants”, talk therapy likely no better than placebo
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I know I am going to receive criticism for this post, but I felt that I had to be done. There is extensive evidence that the “standard of care” treatment for depression – the so-called SSRI drugs – is no better than placebo while carrying a variety of very bad physiological side effects, not to mention the increase in violent and suicidal behavior those drugs are known to cause. The study below demonstrates that another pillar of mental disease treatment – talk therapy – likely works in more than 20% of the cases, and even then the magnitude of effects of probably small. This conclusion could easily be surmised by simply observing that despite ever-increasing rates of talk therapy for all age groups, the rates of mental disorders continue to skyrocket. All in all, it looks like talk therapy is little more than another cash-cow for the medical industry, and in the few cases where it truly works its effects can probably be easily and much more cheaply replicated by the patient simply having an honest conversation with a trusted and loved person. If one thing is certain, very few psychiatrists/psychologists are rated as trusted by their patients, and virtually none are loved. It never ceases to amaze me how conditioning of the public through manipulative mainstream media has managed to normalize not only sharing (and thus making available for profit-making) extremely private information with untrustworthy third parties, but that any attempt to question the effectiveness of professional psychological diabtribe are vehemently condemned by both practitioners and public health officials. Since it is now known that SSRI drugs were deliberately designed to keep the populace docile, servile and hierarchical, it is hard to believe that therapy (developed by the same commercial/medical/political interests that invented SSRI drugs) would have an effect any better than chemical “antidepressants”. The only question that remains, at least to me, is what side effects (if any) does talk therapy induce in the patient. In what percentage of patients does it make things worse?
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-43757-004
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-evidence-for-evidence-based-therapy-is-not-as-clear-as-we-thought
“…Around 20 per cent of ESTs performed well across a majority of our metrics (eg, problem-solving therapy for depression, interpersonal psychotherapy for bulimia nervosa, the aforementioned exposure therapy for specific phobias). This means not only that the therapies have been subjected to clinical trials, but that the evidence produced from these clinical trials seems credible and supports the claim that the EST will help people. We also found a ‘murky middle’: 30 per cent of ESTs had mixed results across metrics, performing neither consistently well nor poorly (eg, cognitive therapy for depression, interpersonal psychotherapy for binge-eating disorder). That leaves 50 per cent of ESTs with subpar outcomes across most of our metrics (eg, eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing for PTSD, interpersonal psychotherapy for depression). In other words, although these ESTs seemed to work based on the claims of the clinical trials cited by the Society of Clinical Psychology, we found the evidence from these trials lacked statistical credibility. For these ESTs, the relevant research results are sufficiently ambiguous that we cannot be sure that they really do work better than other forms of therapy.”
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If anybody wants a through examination of the evidence underpinning 'psychology' I thoroughly recommend William Epstein's The Illusion of Psychotherapy. You can listen to an excellent interview with him about it here.
It's just a sick joke that wastes people's time, distracts them from finding real solutions and most importantly distracts from the material needs of desperate people: convince people all they need to get better is 'psychotherapy sessions' and all of a sudden their housing, food and clothing needs don't need to be considered. Perfect for nations controlled by a miserly, parasitic elite that want to take everything for themselves while they watch the vulnerable rot in the gutter.
***It substitutes for material care, and there is absolutely no evidence that any form of talk therapy is successful,” he said. “And thus it is a soothing fiction of social concern.”
He said psychotherapy works to re-enforce social values and one of the most important is that people invent themselves and therefore are responsible solely for themselves.
Epstein believes it re-enforces the idea that people who are the bottom rung of the class system deserve to be there because that is how they invented themselves.
However, Epstein said, in reality, people are a reflection of their environment.
“The soothing fiction is that people invent themselves. The reality is is that the environment does,” he said.***
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@haidut said in Just like SSRI “antidepressants”, talk therapy likely no better than placebo:
The study below demonstrates that another pillar of mental disease treatment – talk therapy – likely works in more than 20% of the cases, and even then the magnitude of effects of probably small.
If one thing is certain, very few psychiatrists/psychologists are rated as trusted by their patients, and virtually none are loved.
This is probably a two way street, inside them as well. That's probably why the stat is dismal.
It never ceases to amaze me how conditioning of the public through manipulative mainstream media has managed to normalize not only sharing (and thus making available for profit-making) extremely private information with untrustworthy third parties, but that any attempt to question the effectiveness of professional psychological diatribe are vehemently condemned by both practitioners and public health officials.
Now chatbots.
Since it is now known that SSRI drugs were deliberately designed to keep the populace docile, servile and hierarchical, it is hard to believe that therapy (developed by the same commercial/medical/political interests that invented SSRI drugs) would have an effect any better than chemical “antidepressants”.
Some evidence seems to indicate a more recent intervention could do that too.
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If therapy is of now value then what advice would someone give to a woman who's still upset as an adult over having been repeatedly raped by her father or something along those lines?
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I don't have time atm to look it up but some studies found negative outcomes with talk therapy (like this one).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4917117/#sec012
The effect I had read about was rumination and fixating on repressed memories. Anyone even loosely acquainted with psychology since the 1980s probably knows about the false memory effect that skyrocketed after "suppressed memory" became trendy in psychology. Robert Whitaker has written three books on the psychology-pharmaceutical industry that are worth reading.
Reminds me of this approach he mentions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_DialogueOf course it's not popular because it basically cautions against drugs and psychotherapy but offers basic "retreat" style hospice care with health professionals. Only places like Finland and Scandinavia can afford it / are interested.
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@Hando-Jin said in Just like SSRI “antidepressants”, talk therapy likely no better than placebo:
It's just a sick joke that wastes people's time, distracts them from finding real solutions and most importantly distracts from the material needs of desperate people: convince people all they need to get better is 'psychotherapy sessions' and all of a sudden their housing, food and clothing needs don't need to be considered. Perfect for nations controlled by a miserly, parasitic elite that want to take everything for themselves while they watch the vulnerable rot in the gutter.
Haven't read this Epstein fellow but I'll agree environment is very important.
Let's pretend for a second that insurance covered the majority of psychotherapy. I.e., imagine that prescriptions were $100-$500 and in-person visits were $10-20, the exact opposite of reality. If people weren't worried about the money they have to spend to "help themselves," they might actually start feeling better. They might see the burden of the "talk therapy" as a low cost option instead of a dire, catastrophic necessity. Let's say the upper bounds is out of pocket $400 per session. There goes at least 2 or 3 bills and/or gas and food. Absurd, the power of the evil schmucks and shysters who control all medical associations, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, and academic research.
