Scott Alexander examines a study comparing the effectiveness of drugs and therapy for psychiatric disorders, discussing the results and methodological limitations of the research. Longer summary

This post analyzes a study comparing the efficacy of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for various psychiatric disorders. The author discusses the graph showing effect sizes for different treatments, noting that most psychiatric treatments have an effect size around 0.5. He expresses some uncertainty about the statistical methods used and highlights three surprising findings: drugs appearing more effective than therapy for borderline personality disorder and insomnia, and drugs being more effective at preventing relapse than stopping acute episodes. The post also discusses the limitations of psychotherapy trials, noting that lower quality trials tend to show much higher effect sizes than high-quality ones, and that psychotherapy research often lacks sufficient blinding and control groups. Shorter summary