Comment by reify
2 days ago
As a practicing Psychotherapist for over 25 years, I never came across anyone who practiced DBT.
I had heard that some Psychiatric nurses liked it.
I always understaood that it was a modern extention of CBT. The go to, cheap as chips, not very good, therapeutic self brainwashing technique.
Big claims of curing depression, eating disorders and a raft of other mentally distressing diagnoses in a miraculous 6 weeks, have all fallen by the wayside. After 10 weeks the symptoms always return and the client is not fixed in any way.
governments love it, because its cheap, and they can say they are addressing the mental health crisis in society, of which, they are solely and fully responsible for.
The psychologist undergraduate go to, to prove that CBT works and they are good at using graphs and figures.
A new client felt 10/10 depressed at his first session. At session 3 he was 8/10 depressed. At session 6 he was 6/10 depressed. clearly CBT cures depression by filling in a few forms. Write that up in your dissertation and get your degree.
Could this possibly be due to the fact that the client, for the first time in his life, actually had the opportunity to talk about his problems. Nothing to do with being taught how to use a CBT model.
The incessant form filling is totally, for me anyway, anti-therapy.
I worked in many different organisations over the years that banned outright the use of CBT.
Concerning how widespread DBT is: In the last five years in grad school, I knew many people doing a psychology PhD and DBT was one of the major training focuses for their clinical psychology curriculum. I would say the characterization given by this article matches very closely with what they told me over the last ~5 years.
My impression of DBT compared to CBT, based on what my friends told me, is that DBT is much more confrontational. I remember one friend even specifically said that it took her a long time to "unlearn" the therapist's natural response to affirm and validate, but then redirect negative feelings with skills.
> As a practicing Psychotherapist for over 25 years,
I'm trying to find a therapist after about 20 intermittent years of disappointing therapy experiences.
I find CBT trite ( https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/16/cbt-in-the-water-suppl... )
But psychodynamic is directionless and in a way that never seems to help either, and hides behind the lack of measurement. It could be amazing with a wise Irvin Yalom figure, but 99% of us aren't interacting with somebody that thoughtful.
How well, generally, do you think therapy works? What works best?
In your experience, what have you seen that works?
Honestly, as somebody who filled out way too many CBT forms - there's a good chance you only get the score improvement because people don't want to get the provider in trouble with their employer.
The scoring sheets are, pretty much, bullshit. So are the endless worksheets.