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"Studies May Overstate The Benefits of Talk Therapy For Depression"

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Dr. Richard Grossman:
Here's an interesting article from the NPR web site:

"Studies May Overstate The Benefits of Talk Therapy For Depression" by Jon Hamilton

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/30/444789771/studies-may-overstate-the-benefits-of-talk-therapy-for-depression

And this follows another study that said (from the same article):  "The finding comes several years after a similar study reached the same conclusion about antidepressant drugs."


All comments are welcome...

Richard

Meh:
Reading... well there is money to be made off of drugs and running medical offices is my knee jerk reaction. And there is a demand.

"inflated by publication bias. This sort of bias occurs when studies finding that a treatment works are more likely to be published than those with a negative finding."  Hum this is sort of interesting, I had not thought of this before.

I think I went to a seminar/talk many many years ago that was given by that Celebrity doctor Drew from MTV who basically told people to "Take depression seriously and ask for help". Not sure why I am bringing that up it just pops into my mind for some reason.

I mean doctors and nurses just use the tools they have. What does a medical professional do if they have a common issue showing up. They have to offer something to people even if it doesn't work great.

Or maybe when the drugs were available the idea of depression was promoted even more to sell the product. IDK

Most of the therapy I went to I would say didn't help me when I was actively in the seeking-a-solution phase. I went to one therapy group where I said very little and just sat there listening but I found the hand outs were extremely informative, it was a grief group. It just made grief a valid thing. For me I hadn't really thought of it as being important and valid. For whatever reason I think of this as being the most helpful therapy I ever had. I went to one prior group that focused on depression and that group I hated and quit. There was also a lady that I saw one-on-one. I think I just wanted to talk to her to get a sense of normalcy when I was in a homeless shelter. I think it helped to conceptualize "the bigger better picture" that includes a concept of a future that was more normal. There is kind of a difference between being "I am a homeless person" which becomes a definition of self versus "I am a person experiencing homelessness" where its just an experience and not a self-description.

Part of the problem is a person is basically saying "I rarely ever feel happy/good anymore this sucks!!!!!... and then a therapist pushes some papers to them related to cognitive feedback and it feels like boring homework/doing taxes... and then afterwards its the same result "I rarely ever feel happy/good anymore this sucks"

I think I maybe sadly got to the point where I decided that people are not meant to be happy all the time, or most of the time. LOL Accepted reality finally.

If therapy is helpful I would say that it seems very subtle. I mean people believe in acupuncture and there is science to back it up I guess. Acupuncture is another thing that I think of as being subtle. Maybe therapy by it's very nature just isn't so splashy.

I think patients who are seeking treatment for depression are secretly hopeful or desperate for help.. not exactly "duly pessimistic"... but yah maybe also pessimistic. Maybe they are hopeful pessimists.

I would definitely think that therapy would be more helpful for things other than depression though. There is something about depression that I feel is hard to explain to people and hard for people to understand even if they are supposedly experts.

Last thought is that in my opinion I think depression has more to do with emotions/physical issues/loneliness than thought process. If therapy is directed towards re-training a person's thoughts or thinking patterns I think it's not getting to the core of it.

Hopalong:
I think people need so much compassion.
We live in such an insane world.

If your heart is functioning, it's depressing.

Just having someone listen to you with compassion and a lot of love lets your courage come back. Some blows are vicious.

I know depression is a fog in the brain, and different from sorrow, but sometimes I think therapists over-focus on the clinical part and under-focus on the human absurdity and Meaning of It All questions...

Hops

Meh:

--- Quote from: Hopalong on October 03, 2015, 12:18:08 AM ---If your heart is functioning, it's depressing.

--- End quote ---

OMG so true.

Twoapenny:
Personally I feel that talk therapy quite literally saved my life, not in only in those awful 'I really want to kill myself' moments but in terms of helping me to escape all the horrible things that were pulling me down and rebuild a life that is healthier and more focused on me rather than me reacting to other people.  Things seem to go through phases like fashion, counselling seems to be changing and the talk therapy that I had doesn't seem to be around as much now; it seems to be more of a CBT type approach.  Whilst I felt that helped me to manage on a day to day basis it was the earth shattering moments of talking about abuse that had a really profound effect on me and - and I'm sure I've said this before - the two therapists I had were the first healthy people I'd ever really come into contact with.  I'd never experienced anyone having my best interests at heart; everyone in my life for many years was there for what they could get out of me and just having people who were genuinely concerned about my well being was enormously healing.  I genuinely feel very grateful to those two women for helping me to get my life going in a different direction.  They gave me some of the mothering I'd never had; that nurturing compassion that my mum just isn't able to do.  I still always remember the end of each session with one therapist (who was about the same age as my mum); she'd walk me to the door, open it for me and just give me a little rub on the shoulder as I left.  I always felt it was an incredibly mothering thing to do and the comfort it gave me was enormous.  So silly with such a small gesture but there was a reassurance and an acceptance in it, somehow, that I never got anywhere else.  Equally I've never found anti-depressants helpful yet know others who swear by them and who've found them very beneficial.  I suppose the thing is we are all very different and our desire to keep lumping people together and treating them all the same way just doesn't work :)

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