Landmark mental health research explores negative side effects of therapy
The unexplored territory of the negative side effects of psychological treatment is the focus of a groundbreaking research project from the Stockholm University in Sweden.
Therapy has long been known to be an effective treatment for different forms of mental illness. However, there is not much known about whether certain patients can actually get worse or have other types of side effects from their treatment, according to Alexander Rozental, licensed psychologist and PhD in psychology.
He has, among other topics, researched the effectiveness of online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Online CBT is more or less like following a self-help book with the support of a psychologist through email. The method is recommended by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare guidelines which Sweden’s local governments rely upon heavily.
“This dissertation is the first to examine the side effects of internet-based therapy. There’s no international research, either. That’s why this research is so important. If we’re going to use this method widely, we have to be aware of the risks,”Rozental said.
The part of the dissertation that focused on internet-based therapy showed that around 6% of the 3,000 patients studied got worse during treatment. In another study, people who had received psychotherapy, for example, in an outpatient psychiatric setting, in the past few years were asked if they had experienced other types of negative effects.
They saw that a third of the people who received psychotherapy treatments had difficult memory resurface, had more anxiety, or felt stressed. It was also not uncommon to have a poor relationship with the therapist or low-quality treatment.
It’s not so surprising that people can feel worse when dealing with unpleasant experiences in therapy. It’s also true that a treatment than can have a positive effect on some people can affect others negatively, just like medicine.
What is needed is a better understanding of side effects, both for catching patients who become worse earlier and protecting patients from rogue therapists.
“I hope that psychologists and psychotherapists become more aware that there can actually be side effects and that they need to ask patients whether they are experiencing any. I also think that society should regulate who is allowed to provide treatment. There are currently no laws preventing an unlicensed person from working in mental health,”said Rozental.
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