Psychotherapy

-A commentary suggests that the evidence to support the use of cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis is tenuous, in part because CBT itself is so variable.

-Does prominent Canadian child psychiatrist Stanley Kutcher have different standards for evidence depending on whether he's evaluating psychotherapy or psychotropics?

Since the 1980s, a type of psychotherapy called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has become dominant. Like it or loathe it, CBT is now so ubiquitous it is often the only talking therapy available in both public and voluntary health settings. It is increasingly spoken about in the media and in living rooms across the country. Yet when we speak about CBT, what are we talking of? For CBT only exists - as we will see - as a political convenience.

-Counselor and artist Sara Nash asks whether its good that she rarely shares her own experiences of inner pain when she talks to college students about suicidal ideation.

-Tania Glyde discusses the difficulties that people who participate in alternative sexual practices have being understood by mental health professionals.

-Does psychology need to develop a fundamentally different scientific strategy?

-A debate between one of the co-authors of the Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia report, and two authors whose meta-analysis of cognitive behavioral therapy was cited in that report.

-What evidence base is there to guide a patient switching from one type of psychotherapeutic treatment to another?

In The Conversation, two psychologists discuss the research evidence into providing early intervention mental health services to the public shortly after large-scale tragedies. They advise that doing nothing is often much better and safer for people.

The British Psychological Society's Research Digest reviews "10 of The Most Counter-Intuitive Psychology Findings Ever Published." These include classics such as Self-help Mantras Can...

"I often have paranoid feelings concerning mental health practitioners even though these are the professionals who apparently are trying to help," writes Jack Bragen...

Maria Popova provides some excerpts about music, madness and therapy from the new book, Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, from the iconic Canadian...

What should the relational and emotional stance of the therapist be? Just who exactly is the therapist in relationship to the person coming to see the therapist? What is the therapist's job, exactly? What should the therapist's disposition be toward the person sitting across from them? What kinds of assumptions or presumed power come with the label therapist and are those assumptions harmful or helpful?

One-on-one Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is better than psychiatric medications or other common psychotherapeutic interventions for severe anxiety disorders in adults, according to a large...

Most US children and youth diagnosed with ADHD are taking stimulant medications, but less than one-quarter are receiving any amount of concurrent psychotherapy of...

I am a very optimistic psychologist, but with reason. For 25 years I've been working with people who have had psychological problems in every conceivable area. Many psychologists have problems with burnout, especially early in their careers. For me, this has been very different. By using the treatment techniques that I do, I feel anti-burned out. It is so gratifying to see people get out of their serious problems, that I look forward to every day of clinical work.

In what the authors describe as "the first meta-analysis on the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic hospital treatment in Germany," two Hamburg University Medical Center researchers...

One of the most remarkable aspects of Robert Whitaker’s (2010) outstanding book Anatomy of an Epidemic was his comparative data that contrasted outcomes for mental disorders prior to the introduction of pharmacological treatments with outcomes for mental disorders after pharmacological treatments became the main, and often only, course of action. I have asked people in workshops to estimate who might be better off – someone diagnosed with what we now call bipolar disorder prior to the introduction of lithium or someone diagnosed after lithium became a standard treatment. Almost without exception workshoppers estimate that the people diagnosed before lithium was available do much worse. Whitaker’s data indicate exactly the opposite. It’s a staggering finding.

The Economist reports on "Ellie," a programmed, virtual psychologist designed by researchers at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles, who has a...

It’s funny how things turn out. I would never have anticipated becoming interested in the way in which psychological treatment is provided to people. A benign comment by a manager at the beginning of my clinical psychology career, however, piqued my interest and things have never been the same since.

Today discusses a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that found people with low self-esteem don’t like it when...

Examining the link between depression and loss of employment, a study by American researchers in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that cognitive therapy...

When Doug Turkington, a UK psychiatrist, first announced to his colleagues that he wanted to help people with psychotic experiences by talking to them, he was told by some that this would just make them worse, and by others that this would be a risk to his own mental health, and would probably cause him to become psychotic! Fortunately, he didn’t believe either group, and in the following decades he went on to be a leading researcher and educator about talking to people within the method called CBT for psychosis.

On May 16, 2014, I retired from a 35-year career as a professor of clinical psychology at Miami University. As a part of my retirement celebration, I gave a Final Lecture to my Department. These Final Lectures give retiring faculty members the opportunity to talk about anything they think is important for their colleagues and the attending students to hear. I focused on the changes I have witnessed in the profession of clinical psychology over my career; changes that were not for the better.

As we develop critical awareness about the mental health “treatments” that don’t work and that often make things much worse, the question inevitably comes up, what can those who want to be helpful be doing instead?