Suppose all psychotherapies are equally effective: What then?

Ever since a few of Freud's disciples left the psychoanalytic inner circle and developed their own treatments, the number of "talk" therapies has proliferated. Much effort has been made to classify the plethora of treatments, with a focus on establishing their effectiveness via clinical trials. The problems with this strategy become apparent if all treatments examined via clinical trials for a disorder are not only found to be effective but work equally well and are not different in outcome than newly developed treatments, and the response rate to all treatments is modest-a finding recently established for the treatment of depression. In response to this situation, leading researchers have recommended that "best practice" is offering different treatments one after another until an adequate response is achieved. The empirical problems with this "treatment-centric" approach and an evidence-based alternative shown to improve the quality of care are discussed and presented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).