Apr 11 2009
Just How Successful Was That Successful Psychotherapy?
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a serious condition. I would call it a “mental” condition or ailment, but I don’t like that term. It can perpetuate an outdated body/mind dualism. That aside, one of the symptoms of GAD is chronic worrying. A new treatment from the cognitive behavioral branch of psychotherapy called “worry exposure” (WE) has recently been tested. And it was a success, as the news release concludes -
This is the first study to show that a stand-alone exposure in sensu technique – WE – is efficacious in the treatment of GAD.
Wonderful news. As a humanistically-oriented ape I welcome treatments that reduce suffering and increase the quality of life for my kind. But as a skeptical primate I also wonder, Just how successful was that success?
The answer, it seems, is fairly successful. But I’m not sure. Of the subjects in the WE treatment group, 48% were measured as achieving “high end state functioning.” Whatever that means. But the WE group was only one of three. There was also a control group and a group that was treated with an “empirically supported stand-alone treatment,” applied relaxation (AR). How many of the AR group reached the threshold endstate? For that group the number was better: 56%.
As for the control group — that very important number was not provided. To determine that a treatment is effective it is imperative to know how much better the treatment group did/does than those in the placebo or control group. It is one thing if proportion of subjects in the control group reaching the deemed “success” threshold was 10%, something completely else if the number was 40%.
How successful was that successful treatment? I, for one, want to know.
