Early Reporting of Psychotherapeutic Success
As a psychotherapist in private practice, I am of course responsible for my practice expenses as well as maintaining my clinical work. So, when the media talks about psychotherapeutic success, naturally I am interested both clinically and indeed bottom line. I have noticed, however, that more and more stories about the successes of psychotherapeutic interventions seem to be being reported far earlier than I would think would be logical or even responsible.
An example of this is a story I came across today which said that MDMA and psychotherapy have been shown to “cure alcoholics”. Naturally, I was interested so I looked at the article and it was based on four people stopping heavy drinking with this combination. Is this a good thing? Sure. But I feel that it would be more appropriate to report on this when the trials are a bit larger and the results a bit more clinically interesting.
Look, I get it, we need to promote research as it is the way the profession develops in the future. All I am saying, let’s not over sensationalise things and try to keep a balanced approach to reporting on research. That balance must be for successes as well as failures.
