I’ve contributed small amounts of money to MAPS , but I haven’t been thinking of those as EA donations.
My doubts overlap a fair amount with those of Scott Alexander , but I’ll focus on somewhat different reasoning which led me there.
It sounds like MAPS has been getting impressive results, and MAPS would likely qualify as an EA charity if FDA approval were the main obstacle to extending those results to the typical person who seeks help with PTSD. However, I suspect there are other important obstacles.
I know a couple of people, who I think consider themselves EAs, who have been trying to promote an NLP-based approach to treating PTSD, which reportedly has a higher success rate than MAPS has reported. The basic idea behind it has been around for years , without spreading very widely, and without much interest from mainstream science.
Maybe the reports I hear involve an improved version of the basic technique, and it will take off as soon as the studies based on the new version are published.
Or maybe the glowing reports are based on studies that attracted both therapists and patients who were unusually well suited for NLP, and don’t generalize to random therapists and random PTSD patients. And maybe the MAPS study has similar problems.
Whatever the case is there, the ease with which I was able to stumble across an alternative to psychedelics that sounds about equally promising is some sort of evidence against the hypothesis that there’s a shortage of promising techniques to treat PTSD.
I suspect there are important institutional problems in getting mental help professionals to adopt techniques that provide quick fixes. I doubt it’s a complete coincidence that the number of visits required for for successful therapy happens to resemble a number that maximizes revenue per patient.
If that were simply a conspiracy of medical professionals, and patients were eager to work around them, I’d be vaguely hopeful of finding a way to do so. But I’m under the impression that patients have a weak tendency to contribute to the problem, by being more likely to recommend to their friends a therapist who they see for long time, than they would be to recommend a therapist who they stop seeing after a month because they were cured that fast. And I don’t see lots of demand for alternative routes to finding therapists that have good track records.
None of these reasons for doubt is quite sufficient by itself to decide that MAPS isn’t an EA charity, but they outline at least half of my intuitions for feeling somewhat pessimistic about this cause area.
NLP-based approach to treating PTSD, which reportedly has a higher success rate than MAPS has reported. The basic idea behind it has been around for years , without spreading very widely, and without much interest from mainstream science.
From the report you linked to, in the Key Findings section: “No clinical evidence on NLP for the treatment of adults with PTSD, GAD, or depression was identified.”
Could you point me to a citation for NLP having a higher success rate than MDMA for treating PTSD?
I’ve contributed small amounts of money to MAPS , but I haven’t been thinking of those as EA donations.
My doubts overlap a fair amount with those of Scott Alexander , but I’ll focus on somewhat different reasoning which led me there.
It sounds like MAPS has been getting impressive results, and MAPS would likely qualify as an EA charity if FDA approval were the main obstacle to extending those results to the typical person who seeks help with PTSD. However, I suspect there are other important obstacles.
I know a couple of people, who I think consider themselves EAs, who have been trying to promote an NLP-based approach to treating PTSD, which reportedly has a higher success rate than MAPS has reported. The basic idea behind it has been around for years , without spreading very widely, and without much interest from mainstream science.
Maybe the reports I hear involve an improved version of the basic technique, and it will take off as soon as the studies based on the new version are published.
Or maybe the glowing reports are based on studies that attracted both therapists and patients who were unusually well suited for NLP, and don’t generalize to random therapists and random PTSD patients. And maybe the MAPS study has similar problems.
Whatever the case is there, the ease with which I was able to stumble across an alternative to psychedelics that sounds about equally promising is some sort of evidence against the hypothesis that there’s a shortage of promising techniques to treat PTSD.
I suspect there are important institutional problems in getting mental help professionals to adopt techniques that provide quick fixes. I doubt it’s a complete coincidence that the number of visits required for for successful therapy happens to resemble a number that maximizes revenue per patient.
If that were simply a conspiracy of medical professionals, and patients were eager to work around them, I’d be vaguely hopeful of finding a way to do so. But I’m under the impression that patients have a weak tendency to contribute to the problem, by being more likely to recommend to their friends a therapist who they see for long time, than they would be to recommend a therapist who they stop seeing after a month because they were cured that fast. And I don’t see lots of demand for alternative routes to finding therapists that have good track records.
None of these reasons for doubt is quite sufficient by itself to decide that MAPS isn’t an EA charity, but they outline at least half of my intuitions for feeling somewhat pessimistic about this cause area.
From the report you linked to, in the Key Findings section: “No clinical evidence on NLP for the treatment of adults with PTSD, GAD, or depression was identified.”
Could you point me to a citation for NLP having a higher success rate than MDMA for treating PTSD?
I don’t know whether it has been published. I heard it from Rick Schwall (http://shfhs.org/aboutus.html).
Got it, thanks!
Curious whether “No clinical evidence on NLP for the treatment of adults with PTSD, GAD, or depression was identified” is an update for you re: NLP’s efficacy.
No, I expected that no rigorous research had been done on NLP as of 2014, and I don’t know how rigorous the more recent research has been.