Selling Bad Therapy to Trauma Victims [psychologytoday.com]

Alicia Doktor 11/27/174:00 AM

The American Psychological Association (APA) just issued guidelines for treating trauma. Patients and therapists would be wise to ignore them.

The guidelines are supposed to reflect the best scientific evidence. In fact, they ignore all scientific evidence except one kind of study, called randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

RCTs randomly assign people to treatment or control groups. They can answer certain questions (Is a medicationmore effective than a sugar pill?) and not others (How does the medication work? What is the disease? What are its causes?). In the absence of careful scientific reasoning, RCTs can lead to foolish conclusions.

[For more on this story by Jonathan Shedler Ph.D., go to https://www.psychologytoday.co...erapy-trauma-victims]

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