title: The effectiveness of psychotherapy. The Consumer Reports study.
abstract: Consumer Reports (1995, November) published an article which concluded that patients benefited very substantially from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication plus psychotherapy. Furthermore, no specific modality of psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder; psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not differ in their effectiveness as treaters; and all did better than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring. Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was limited by insurance or managed care did worse. The methodological virtues and drawbacks of this large-scale survey are examined and contrasted with the more traditional efficacy study, in which patients are randomized into a manualized, fixed duration treatment or into control groups. I conclude that the Consumer Reports survey complements the efficacy method, and that the best features of these two methods can be combined into a more ideal method that will best provide empirical validation of psychotherapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104, USA.
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Seligman
mesh_terms: D003258:Consumer Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008329:Managed Care Programs; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011613:Psychotherapy; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D016896:Treatment Outcome