I want to second this! Not a mental health expert, but I have depression and so have spent a fair amount of time looking into treatments / talking to doctors / talking to other depressed people / etc.
I would consider a treatment extremely good if it decreased the amount of depression a typical person experienced by (say) 20%. If a third of people moved from the “depression” to “depression-free” category I would be very, very impressed. Ninety-five percent of people moving from “depressed” to “depression free” sets off a lot of red flags for me, and makes me think the program has not successfully measured mental illness.
(To put this in perspective: 95% of people walking away depression-free would make this far effective than any mental health intervention I’m aware of at any price point in any country. Why isn’t anyone using this to make a lot of money among rich American patients?)
I think some adjustment is appropriate to account for the fact that people in the US are generally systematically different from people in (say) Uganda in a huge range of ways which might lead to significant variation in the quality of existing care, or the nature of their problems and their susceptibility to treatment. As a general matter I’m not necessarily surprised if SM can relatively easily achieve results that would be exceptional or impossible among very different demographics.
That said, I don’t think these kinds of considerations explain a 95% cure rate, I agree that sounds extreme and intuitively implausible.
I want to second this! Not a mental health expert, but I have depression and so have spent a fair amount of time looking into treatments / talking to doctors / talking to other depressed people / etc.
I would consider a treatment extremely good if it decreased the amount of depression a typical person experienced by (say) 20%. If a third of people moved from the “depression” to “depression-free” category I would be very, very impressed. Ninety-five percent of people moving from “depressed” to “depression free” sets off a lot of red flags for me, and makes me think the program has not successfully measured mental illness.
(To put this in perspective: 95% of people walking away depression-free would make this far effective than any mental health intervention I’m aware of at any price point in any country. Why isn’t anyone using this to make a lot of money among rich American patients?)
I think some adjustment is appropriate to account for the fact that people in the US are generally systematically different from people in (say) Uganda in a huge range of ways which might lead to significant variation in the quality of existing care, or the nature of their problems and their susceptibility to treatment. As a general matter I’m not necessarily surprised if SM can relatively easily achieve results that would be exceptional or impossible among very different demographics.
That said, I don’t think these kinds of considerations explain a 95% cure rate, I agree that sounds extreme and intuitively implausible.