Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the Gold Standard for Psychotherapy?

Yeah, I think its dangerous terminology and is probably misused a lot anyway.

 

What he called nonscience, and later was called pseudoscience.

 

Thank you for saying that, Inara. It means a lot to me. We both were motivated to speak by our very hard personal experiences.

Let's try to be accurate and calm. I'm bad at calm.

40-50% is the range I found. I blurred it for peace.

 

Hihi!

 

At least here they don't take that too axactly. it's like getting depression or somatic disorder automatically. And automatically you qualify for the according treatment. How is it elsewhere?

Here, there are a few doctors (private practitioners, one clinic) who can diagnose "CFS" (ME); the number is smaller than 10, and the clinic only takes locals at this time. Whenever you go to a GP, neurologist or...they won't be able to recognize ME. My PENE/PEM description got totally ignored, PET results couldn't be interpreted, I was told this or that is not school medicine (in the US it is)... How is that in other countries?

This in mind, I naturally got psychiatric diagnoses. After getting the correct diagnosis ME, I was informed that I cannot get a new social aid block from my health insurance, because not diagnoses count, but symptoms, and our health (and so judical) system says depression and ME have the same symptoms.

Well-said.

How is it in the UK? Or in the US? Or Israel, Ireland, Australia...? If you get a new CFS diagnosis, what will happen? What will happen if you depend on social aids? Does this affect your free decision against or for a certain treatment, especially CBT and GET? The answers to that will tell how important it is to keep on invalidating those studies with real scientific facts. And maybe we can coordinate that. (I saw on pubmed several articles against PACE - there must have been some coordination. This is powerful.)

 

I am "here" - I have been living in Germany for the last 25 years. I know ME sufferers who have accepted a diagnosis of depression just to get half a pension - if they carry on insisting they are not depressed and have a physical illness called ME, they get no money. As they are too ill to work, the money runs out and in the end they say "ok, I'm depressed, can I have some money for food now".

I think you meant "hee hee"?

 

@TiredSam, yeah, hihi is German, sorry

 

That's what I heard several times, also from people with back injuries or severe spinal illnesses. (I will have to experience that, too, since I will have to apply for pension. I was told, due to my age, I will most probably get no pension at all.)

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/929641005388828673


https://insights.ovid.com/counselin...vestigation-impact-psychotherapist/6/00001192

 

This is not to say that no people will find speaking to a therapist useful, but it does seem that there's a lot of BS and ritual around the claimed 'expertise' of therapists.

 

The concept of gold standard is a study that best controls for bias and error. It can still be wrong, have other biases, or be fraudulent.

 

Quite old, but I just came across that. Interesting thoughts from someone suffering depression who underwent CBT:

https://morgueticiasmentalhealthmausoleum.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/cognitive-bullshit-therapy/

PS/this does not belittle the experience of those who were helped by CBT. IMO, a good psychotherapist is what is more important. The harm comes when a bad psychotherapist with no intuition relies only on bad theories and standard practices applied without questionning.

 

Not available. Could this be the same article?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2654783


If so, they got two replys - both named "The Evidence for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy".

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673536

That argument doesn't even make sense? The criticism is unconvincing because other parts pf psychology have the same methodical weakness...?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673533we

So if you have weak evidence, it's still ok to call it "gold standard" - because it's the least bad....?

 

Full text paywalled, but this sci-hub link currently is working for me:

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.13737

 

well, I don't think we really know why they work. I doubt it's as simple as that they're "chemical crutches." I got on anti-depressants when I was 25, before the SSRIs came out. They tried me on about eight or nine before finding one that alleviated some of the suffering. If I only needed a chemical crutch, I might have felt better after the first or third or fifth. But I didn't. That's not "proof," of course. But it does not seem to me that the chemical crutch theory matches my experience. Not to say I know what depression actually is.

 

That's the problem, nobody knows exactly what depression is (and it may encompass very different things), but too many people do not, like you, acknowledge this and have strong claims about what they believe depression is.

 

As expected, most of the "efficacy" is down to poor accuracy, bias and reliability, mostly dissipates when higher standards are used:

The biggest problem with cognitive therapies remains identifying when there actually is a behavioral element, which can't reliably be tested for. Those probably make a trivial percentage of what is commonly labeled as mental health issues and no one can tell the difference anyway, even compared to severe chronic diseases. It even appears that the "experts" actually fare worse, since they consider almost everything, including most medical symptoms, to be behavioral.

So there's a stalemate. It clearly doesn't do as advertised but too much has been invested in it to accept defeat. The inevitable collapse of IAPT will likely be the tipping point, but it could go on and on for a while until that happens.