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Little is understood about the effectiveness of pharmacotherapy or psychotherapy compared with each other or with placebo or no treatment. These researchers conducted a systematic review of 61 meta-analyses involving 852 treatment trials of 137,126 patients with 21 psychiatric disorders.
The meta-analyses of placebo or no-treatment comparisons yielded overall a medium effect size for psychiatric treatment (ES; 0.50), with psychotherapy having a somewhat higher one than pharmacotherapy for acute treatment (ESs, 0.58 and 0.40). In 7 meta-analyses of head-to-head comparisons, pharmacotherapy was more effective than dynamic psychotherapy for dysthymia and schizophrenia, and psychotherapy was better for bulimia and relapse prevention of depressio…