A Review That Psychotherapy Outcomes Aren't Always Positive

The results of psychotherapy are not always seen as beneficial. 40-60% of patients do not meet the criteria for recovery (Fisher and Durham, 1999; Gyani et al., 2013; HSCIS, 2018) and 5% to 8.2% of patients have a negative outcome, ie, their mental state is unfavorable Health is worse at the end of treatment than at the beginning of treatment (Barkham et al., 2001; Hansen et al., 2002). Estimates are subject to variance due to differences in measurement and population. However, there is an important distinction to be made between an ineffective treatment and a dangerous treatment. Clinical deterioration can result from a wide variety of causes unrelated to treatment, and failure to receive help from treatment does not necessarily mean it is harmful. It is common for therapy to have unintended consequences, and although these effects do not last long, some therapists believe that going through difficult emotions is necessary for effective treatment (Schermuly-Haupt et al., 2018). On the Negative Effects Questionnaire, Rozental et al. (2019) discovered that 50.9% of 564 patients who took part in low-intensity CBT reported some degree of poor experience while receiving treatment (NEQ). On the other hand, in a study of 14,587 British patients receiving psychotherapy through the National Health Service, five percent of reported "persistent negative consequences" of the treatment (Crawford et al., 2016). Although this is a low percentage, it is a considerable number of patients who claim that the treatment is harming them, at least in some respects. Empirical research on patient safety that looks directly at the factors that cause harm and how to avoid it is not yet well established, although the more general issue of adverse outcomes has been studied at length.