UMUC Critical Reflection on Effectiveness of Psychotherapy Collaborative Critical Reflection and Replies Step 1: Capture your topic. For the critical refl

UMUC Critical Reflection on Effectiveness of Psychotherapy Collaborative Critical Reflection and Replies

Step 1: Capture your topic. For the critical reflections, please choose a one or two sentence direct quotation from the readings or supporting resources as your prompt. The quotation(s) should reference, in a relevant, meaningful way, the issues, idea or concept that you will reflect about and that, in the end, you hope all learners will come to think about as a deeply important truth or lesson of this class. To make it easier for you to reflect meaningfully on the topic, the quotation should be relevant to a topic that you can tie directly to your own (or others’) experiences, observations, and critical reasoning. It should also be something you are willing to discuss with the class and something you are willing to think critically about.

Step 2: Write your reflection. Once you have identified the quotation prompt for your reflection, post it at the top of your paper, followed by a line space. Then, share 300 to 400 words (in meaningful, well organized paragraphs) that defend your belief that there is an important truth or lesson relevant to this course to be gleaned from this quotation. Essentially, your job is to clarify just what the lesson to be learned is and then to strongly (and thoughtfully) defend why you think the lesson is vital.

To help you think about your topic and write well, consider (and answer) these questions: What truth or lesson is being communicated by this quote? Why is this truth or lesson so important? How do your own or other’s experiences and observations relate to and support this truth or lesson? In what ways does this lesson make logical sense to you? In what ways does this lesson make emotional sense to you? How might this lesson be relevant to your own or others’ life and career? Why do some fail to live as if this truth or lesson were important? Why might some suggest this truth or lesson is not important? How would you defend the truth of this lesson from those who disagree and believe the lesson is not important? What can we do (at an individual, community, or society level to make this truth or lesson better recognized or practiced?

You are encouraged to be creative in your reflections. Your reflections may include, when relevant, links to media, pictures, or other supporting resources.

Step 3: Write a Discussion Question that Prompts Further Dialog on the Topic. End your entry with a line space and then post a single, relevant, provocative, open-ended question that you believe will prompt further debate and reflection by readers.

Step 4: Give Your Reflection a Title. Be sure to give your reflection a relevant, catchy but professional title. The title should be something creative that sparks other learners to want to read your reflection. Your title should be like a creative, but good headline. The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy
The Consumer Reports Study
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Martin E. P. Seligman
University of Pennsylvania
Consumer Reports (1995, November) published an article
which concluded that patients benefited very substantially
from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication
plus psychotherapy. Furthermore, no specific modality of
psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder;
psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not
differ in their effectiveness as treaters; and all did better
than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring.
Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was
limited by insurance or managed care did worse. The methodological virtues and drawbacks of this large-scale survey are examined and contrasted with the more traditional
efficacy study, in which patients are randomized into a
manualized, fixed duration treatment or into control groups.
I conclude that the Consumer Reports survey complements
the efficacy method, and that the best features of these two
methods can be combined into a more ideal method that
will best provide empirical validation of psychotherapy.
H
ow do we find out whether psychotherapy works?
To answer this, two methods have arisen: the efficacy study and the effectiveness study. An efficacy
study is the more popular method. It contrasts some kind of
therapy to a comparison group under well-controlled conditions. But there is much more to an efficacy study than just a
control group, and such studies have become a high-paradigm endeavor with sophisticated methodology. In the ideal
efficacy study, all of the following niceties are found:
1. The patients are randomly assigned to treatment and
control conditions.
2. The controls are rigorous: Not only are patients
included who receive no treatment at all, but placebos containing potentially therapeutic ingredients credible to both
the patient and the therapist are used in order to control for
such influences as rapport, expectation of gain, and sympathetic attention (dubbed nonspecifics).
3. The treatments are manualized, with highly detailed
scripting of therapy made explicit. Fidelity to the manual
is assessed using videotaped sessions, and wayward
implementers are corrected.
4. Patients are seen for a fixed number of sessions.
5. The target outcomes are well operationalized (e.g.,
December 1995 • American Psychologist
Copyright 1995 by the American Psychological Association. Inc.
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