How Helpful Is Psychotherapy?

The empirical evidence for the benefits of psychotherapy is very mixed, with the studies showing the greatest benefits from this mental health treatment plagued by small sample sizes and poor study designs.

An effect size of zero in the chart above implies no benefit, a negative effect is harmful, and a positive effect improves mental health outcomes. Standard error which has zero at the top rather than the bottom in the chart, is largely a function of sample size.

The data tends to show that psychotherapy usually, although not always, provides some benefit, but that the benefit shown in large, accurate studies is quite small, and that studies showing large benefits are basically flukes.

The data aren't high enough in quality to distinguish different approaches to psychotherapy from each other.