Resources on CBT "Efficacy"
Greetings and salutations! I am a writer with a little bit of a dilemma and I'm hoping some of the folks at this sub-reddit might be able to help me out. Although it's not my usual form of content, and I don't have a very dedicated readership quite yet, I want to write an article about the actual, genuine efficacy of CBT, and especially how many people- therapists themselves included- seem to be getting lied to about what good it can actually do (ie- many CBT practitioners will claim that they "specialize" in the treatment of conditions- like, say, OCD- that are known to actively be made worse by CBT) and the harm it can cause when it's been misapplied to a situation. I found out while typing up this post that we do have a Media and Resources list here, and I'm definitely going to research some of the items on that list to see if they might have some of the information I'm looking for (and if I can access the books at my local library or buy them affordably enough), but I still think it bears asking for the specific thing(s) I'm looking for. I'm thinking of topics like:
- Therapy drop-out rates, ESPECIALLY if combined with studies on the reasons people drop out (yes, there is a lot of anecdotal information on this subreddit, as well as in my own life, but if there have been actual, bona-fide studies done on the reasons deserters jump the ship, that would add a lot more credibility and insight)
- Statistics on the number of people who attempt or succeed at voluntarily unaliving themselves while they've been in therapy, especially CBT, long-term (meaning they didn't just go home and do it after the 'intake')
- Conditions that are actively made worse by CBT but still prescribed to CBT anyway; the harmful effects, and any knowledge or professional speculation on the reasons why this happens
- Conditions that may not be actively made worse by CBT, but aren't known to be especially helped by it either, and any knowledge or professional speculation on the reasons why it doesn't help
- Research on what it *does* help with/whom it helps- or resources on how this might be under-studied as a whole
- Resources on the history and development of CBT, including topics like how elements of the dominant western culture (such as religion- even though the founders of CBT are known to have not been religious, a lot of religious spaces have co-opted it and added their own 'spin' to the Mental Health-o-sphere; for instance, the Love Languages guy who invented the concept of Love Languages is a religious guy who may have been running an agenda whether he consciously realized it or not) and how easy it is for 'theories' presented that way to just be accepted without people really asking if any of those claims have actually been proven true in a court of rigorous scientific testing
- Statistics on the number of people who get kicked out of therapy because of concerns like therapists absolutely refusing to treat their disorder. I've heard plenty of anecdotes on this, especially from people dealing with BPD, but having some actual numbers on the commonality of this would be tremendously helpful
- Any notes or studies on how under-prepared a therapist is to practice by the end of their education and complications they may experience at their end (such as being motivated to keep clients for the money even when they know they're out of their depth, not being provided adequate resources by their employer(s), or just genuinely not having anything truly helpful to offer because a patients' issues are systemic rather than individualistic in nature).
- Any information, anecdotal or otherwise, about therapists themselves becoming frustrated with the current culture of "Go to therapy!" being a thing people say about everyone and everything they don't understand (most recently for me- a YouTuber I otherwise really like shouted out "Go to therapy!" over a hypothetical romantic fantasy in a way that very much read like media illiteracy...) and weaponized therapy-speak; behaviors, thoughts, and ideas that are considered in the realm of "normal" but misunderstood by society as "problems" that require "treatment" (for instance, I once read that fantasizing about committing violence against someone when you're angry at them is normal; media-illiterate mental health warriors would probably be inclined to interpret this as "DV is completely acceptable, actually" but what it really means is that our species has had to employ violence to survive at all of our evolutionary stages and we will carry those impulses to our graves; playing it out in our heads is a way to vent those feelings and impulses without actually hurting anybody. Having these fantasies does not inherently mean you literally want to hurt someone or that you're violent/an abuser; it means you have urges left over from a long history of human evolution); what I'm going for, here, is that the public is generally ill-equipped to be making the suggestion of going to therapy in the first place.
This post is already so long I'm anxious about getting stopped for word count, so bear in mind that this list is not comprehensive. If you have a recommendation that seems like it fits in here or is topic-adjacent, go ahead and recommend it. I do prefer resources that I can access digitally for free, but anything is better than just googling this and getting back a bunch of resources looking to praise CBT- or else articles that discuss the problem(s) without giving any specific studies or numbers.