Randomized controlled trials and psychotherapy research.

摘要

This issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry contains three randomized controlled trials of psychotherapy. I would like first to discuss general methodological issues of psychotherapy research and then apply them to the three studies in this issue.Does effective psychotherapy share a general characteristic of providing comfort and hope, or by the therapeutic value of a specific technique? If we approach the issue scientifically, we quickly reach the central problem of psychotherapy: What is the proper comparison group? Most randomized controlled trials of psychotherapy used a waiting list comparison group. This does not seem adequate.