Tag: benefits of therapy
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Why Placebos Work
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal summarizes some of the explanations about how we think placebos work. If you read an earlier blog post I wrote about placebos, what I find so fascinating about all this is that even when subjects/patients are told they are receiving a placebo (either in the form of…
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Happiness Promotes Health
In a recent presentation, US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said, “If there was a factor in your life that could reduce your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke, that could increase your chances of living longer, and would make your children less likely to engage in crime or use drugs, and…
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Is Psychotherapy Better Than Medication?
The American College of Physicians has released a new clinical guideline on the treatment of depression in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They suggested that psychotherapy is as effective for treating depression as antidepressants, and “given its relative lack of potential harms, should be strongly considered as the first-line treatment.” This is consistent with the…
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Can Talk Therapy Change Your Brain?
I teach a great professional development and clinical consultation class at Loyola University Maryland. Yesterday morning my doctoral students and I had a great discussion about what makes psychotherapy work (among some other very stimulating discussions). This morning I received an email with a link to an article entitled, Revival of psychotherapy? How “talk” therapy…
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Life after Trauma
In the midst of a traumatic life event, our bodies have a knack of taking over; adrenaline pumps around the body and our natural survival instinct kicks in. But in the aftermath of such an event when the body’s defenses have come down again, we can begin to feel the effects elsewhere – this is…
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Therapy, Medication or Both (or Neither)?
I stumbled upon this brief piece in the Huffington Post about when patients should consider doing psychotherapy, trying medication, doing both at the same time or not doing anything at all. I liked this article because it was short and to the point while giving some nice examples behind the answer to the question: “it…