Outcomes of talking therapies

What can therapy help with?
Talking therapies like those offered by the CASSEL Centre can help clients with a very wide range of issues. There is an A-Z list of many situations where therapy can help on the website It’s good to talk  provided by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).   
 
Does therapy really help?
Research studies consistently find that clients are better off after therapy than before. Studies asking clients to rate how they are feeling before and after therapy using psychological questionnaires consistently show that clients, on average, rate themselves as less psychologically distressed after therapy as compared to before it.  
 

Effectiveness of counselling and psychotherapy

Mick Cooper, researcher and practitioner at the University of Strathclyde, says:-

• "There is unequivocal evidence that, on average, psychological therapies have a positive effect on people’s mental health and wellbeing.
• Overall, the average impact of counselling and psychotherapy is large, with a mean effect size of around 0.8. Almost eight out of ten individuals who participate in counselling or psychotherapy improve to a greater extent than the average person who does not participate in therapy.
• Overall, around 60 per cent of clients who are diagnosable with a clinical disorder at the commencement of therapy will be diagnosis-free by the end of it.
• Around ten to twenty sessions of therapy are required for 50 per cent of clients to show clinical improvement. The more therapy clients have, the more they tend to improve; but the amount of improvement they experience tends to decrease over time.
• Approximately 5-10 per cent of clients deteriorate as a result of therapy.
• Improvements in mental health tend to be maintained one or two years after therapy has ended, but the longer-term impact of psychological interventions is less clear.
• Talking therapies are generally as effective as pharmacological treatments for psychological distress, and seem to have lower relapse and drop-out rates.
• Counselling and psychotherapy are relatively cost-effective forms of mental health treatment- particularly for more psychologically distressed individuals – with an economic advantage above their contribution to psychological health and wellbeing.”

 (source:  Essential Research Findings in Counselling and Psychotherapy: The Facts are Friendly, Mick Cooper, SAGE Publications Ltd 2008, pages 34-35).