נאום כתוב:איך לבחון יעילות הפסיכותרפיה בכלים מדעיים

How can the effectiveness of psychotherapy be tested with scientific tools? First of all I would like to point out that this is a very broad question that I have been spending 2 years on degrees in psychology Trying to answer it, but I'll just give you a tiny glimpse of the field. I apologize in advance for doing injustice to the question.

I will divide my talk into 3 parts:

• 1. A few words about what psychotherapy is, and if so - how to test its effectiveness
• 2.2 Types of comparisons for the purpose of examining efficiency (it will be clearer when we get to it)
• 3.2 Measuring tools to test this

What is psychotherapy?

The word psychotherapy consists of "psycho" = mind and "therapy" = healing, treatment. Therefore, psychotherapy is actually a general name for all types of mental and emotional treatments that exist. There are many types and we will not go into them. For that matter we will treat them all under one heading. If so, who turns to psychotherapy? Someone who has difficulty or emotional distress and is interested in treatment that will heal him and help him fix the disturbing matter. Therefore, the psychotherapy will be considered effective if it actually helped the person to reach the same goal he was aiming for, to "fix" the same disturbing matter.

*In order for the matter to be clearer, I will give an example of emotional distress - fear of the crowd and illustrate everything through this example. (A person who turns to psychotherapy to reduce the anxiety that arises in him when needed perform in front of an audience).

Types of comparisons:

a) "before-after" which is illustrated by the letters 0 X O

The person's anxiety level is checked before seeking treatment, and after treatment. If a sufficiently significant (and statistically significant) decrease is found, then efficiency can be claimed.

b) Comparison between 2 O X groups

O

compare a group that received treatment to a group that did not - and check for a difference in the level of anxiety - again, the difference should be Statistically significant about claiming efficiency.

 Measuring Tools:

•  a) Physiological means - anxiety manifests itself in high blood pressure, rapid pulse, change in hormonal balance. So you can check it physiologically before and after or between groups and check if there is a change. (cortisol in saliva per day)
• b) In self-report questionnaires - questionnaires that test the subjective experience of the person according to what is reported and compare before and after testing or between groups. We only use well-known and statistically valid questionnaires and there are many of them - the Leibovitch Social Anxiety Questionnaire (Guy used it)

In conclusion, we understood what psychotherapy is and tested some tools to measure its effectiveness

אודות הכותבת:

אביגיל היא פסיכולוגית קלינית המתמחה במתבגרים ובטיפול בחרדות.