How Strong Is the Evidence for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Andrew Scull says the evidence that cognitive behavioral therapy works in cases of schizophrenia is pretty poor. Cochrane reviews, which systematically judge how strong the evidence is for treatments, rate the evidence for cognitive behavioral therapy at best as low and medium confidence. Evidence for milder conditions is more ambiguous than advocates like to pretend.

For milder forms of depression, he thinks cognitive behavioral therapy works better than the drugs, without some of the side effects the drugs have. NICE, the British organization that decides which treatments the National Health Service will support when the evidence is strong enough, has come to the same conclusion. Some patients are helped even where the wider evidence stays weak.