No one bats an eye when a drug for a severe mental illness such as schizophrenia or depression causes serious side effects such as nausea, weight gain, blurred vision or a vanishing libido. But what few patients seeking psychotherapy know is that talking can be dangerous, too — and therapists have not exactly rushed to tell them so...
But while therapists fight over whether they should use only treatments for which there is rigorous scientific evidence for efficacy, they have largely ignored something more fundamental.
"The profession hasn't shown much interest in the problem of treatments that can be harmful," says psychology professor Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University. "Of the few psychotherapies that have been tested for safety, too many cause harm to at least some patients."
The failure to heed Hippocrates reflects the assumption that psychotherapy is, at worst, innocuous. That naive trust should have been blown out of the water when "recovered memory" therapy actually created false memories, often of childhood sexual abuse, tearing families apart.
But the Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Therapy, the clinicians' bible, devotes only 2.5 pages out of 821 to adverse effects, even though documented risks of therapies could fill a small book....
Sharon Begley
Newsweek
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