Your Shrink Might Not Have The Answers

This one just might have your shrink heading for the couch. While talking things out with a therapist can surely be helpful, researchers now say that psychotherapy's usefulness may be overstated by as much as 25 percent.

Say it isn’t so Sigmund!

Researchers maintain the study isn’t to say that psychotherapy doesn't work but that it just doesn't work as well as you would think from reading the scientific literature.

Investigators tracked all NIH funded studies from 1972 to 2008 examining "talk therapy" and their impact on treating depression.

Of the 55 studies found, 13 which mainly showed no psychotherapy benefits were never published.  When researchers tracked down the original data for those studies and included their calculations, they reports talk therapy's effectiveness dropped by about 25 percent which interestingly is the same bias seen in the pharma trials for antidepressants. (Newser)