A Marriage Therapist's Blog

 

Thoughts on Marriage Counseling

 

Oct 31

Counseling is Effective!

By Jay Slupesky
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About Marriage Therapy


Aleut Couple, Qaqortoq, Greenland

A great study was published yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Although it’s not specifically about marriage counseling or couples counseling, it does do a lot to validate that counseling (or “talk therapy”) is effective.

The researchers wanted to determine the most effective way to treat severe anxiety in children and adolescents, ages 7 to 17. What they found is that the best approach is to combine counseling with antidepressant medication (the study used Zoloft). It turned out that after 12 weeks of treatment, 80% of the patients who received the combined treatment improved significantly. Patients who got the medication but did not also get the counseling improved at a 55% rate.

I wanted to mention this study since I’m always interested in proof that counseling is effective.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 3:43 pm and is filed under About Marriage Therapy.

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