A friend recommended me to the man who would become my therapist for the next twenty years. Jerry was a psychology professor at Buffalo State College. From the Bronx, he has a beautiful, salty sense of humor. Not only was he brilliant, but he was also warm and engaging. I felt at home, and we quickly bonded.
Is therapy effective?
A recent article in The New York Times explored whether therapy, based on the most current research, really works. What the studies show, and this has been both my experience and hundreds of others I’ve been privileged to meet over the years who struggle, is that it’s the combination of a good therapist and antidepressant medication that is the most effective treatment. In my case, I have been on Cymbalta (an antidepressant) and Lamictal (a mood stabilizer) for the past fifteen years. The meds quieted the physical symptoms enough so that I could benefit from my therapy with Jerry. Without the medications, I found that my time with Jerry was not as effective because his insights could not penetrate the hard shell of the physical side of depression that my brain was generating.
Some have told me I was lucky to find a therapist as good as Jerry. Others have said that they’ve had therapists who have been real duds or ineffective. As The Times article points out, it’s not always the educational background that matters (Jerry had a Ph.D., but many other therapists have M.S.W.), but, interestingly, if a patient emotionally bonds with a therapist. Bonding and its relationship to the efficacy of the therapy was challenging to measure in all the studies reviewed for the piece. The article reviewed some research that suggests how therapists react to the negativity of a patient that matters. For example, while this was not the case with Jerry and me, many patients can and do blame their therapists for they find the therapy not helping. Sometimes, they outright say this to them. If a therapist responds with empathy rather than being defensive, that is the key.