Climate Change and Economic Development

Abstract

Discusses evidence-based psychotherapy as a myth. Evidence-based psychotherapy seems a reasonable aspiration. There are many weird and wonderful treatments in the field; surely it makes sense to know whether or not they work? I want to argue that evidence-based psychotherapy is a myth. I am not against scientific research in psychotherapy. On the contrary, I believe that scientific advances in psychology and related disciplines are important to the development of psychological therapies. But that is different from claiming that what psychotherapists do is, or should be, securely founded in evidence of effectiveness. The most important point is that psychotherapists, anxious to prove that what they do works, have bought into a medicalised way of defining psychological experience. They act as though it is correct to state that people have depression or anxiety or schizophrenia like they have measles or diabetes or heart disease. But for all of these conditions, including the more extreme psychotic states, it is impossible to divorce the condition from the person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)