Psychological therapies, also called talking therapies, are used to support people suffering from psychological problems such as depression, anxiety and/or obsessive compulsive disorder. There are several therapies available, some of the well-established ones are cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal therapy (IPT). An individual will be better suited to one therapy than another, therapies involve the use of a therapist, and sessions can be delivered face-to-face by a therapist, via the Internet, via telephone call or via computer program (Eccleston et al. , 2014). It takes a considerable period of time for a psychological therapy to establish itself and therefore be considered effective, this is because it depends on intense research conducted, largely longitudinal. In this essay, the assessment of the effectiveness of psychological therapies will be explored, and cognitive behavioral therapy will also be critically evaluated to understand how effective it is as a therapy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The effectiveness of psychological therapies has been established through years of favorable research and meta-analytic studies that allow for the assembly of scientifically based empirical evidence. Fischer (2005) states that the effectiveness of psychotherapies can be defined as symptomatic relief and how well a client is able to continue analyzing himself once therapy sessions have concluded so that past conflicts no longer overwhelm him and interfere with his present life. The nine goals of psychoanalytic therapy are symptom relief; intuition; agency; identity; self-esteem; recognize and manage feelings; ego strength and self cohesion; love, work and mature dependence; and Pleasure and Serenity Mcwilliams (1999). The effectiveness of therapies is demonstrated through the improvement of the client's situation, it is important to be informed about the effectiveness of a therapy so that doctors know whether or not it would be beneficial to use it on their client/patient. Empirical data collected from the mass amount of research conducted is one of the central ways in which the effectiveness of psychological therapies is established, this is because the data highlights the validity and effectiveness of the therapy as well as shedding light on any discrepancies, which to them once they inform if the therapy is affective. An example of this is a 16-week randomized clinical trial conducted by Mufson et al., (2004), the patients consisted of sixty-three adolescents suffering from depression. The focus of the study was on the effectiveness of interpersonal psychotherapy for depressed adolescents compared to treatment as usual (TAU), which would involve a combination of medication and psychotherapy (Blais et. al, 2013). Results suggested that interpersonal therapy compared to treatment as usual (TAU) showed greater symptom reduction and improvement in overall functioning; from the use of analysis of covariance it was highlighted that IPT was the better treatment as the results showed that there were significantly fewer physicians reported symptoms of depression on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (P=.04) . Although this is only one study, which is not enough to establish the effectiveness of a psychological therapy, the support of further studies containing similar results would ultimately allow to establish whether psychological therapy is effective or not. Moving forward, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a frequently used psychological therapy in today's society. It is used to treat many of the stress and anxiety-related problems mentioned in the DSM-V 5, the purpose ofThis therapy is about rebuilding the way you think to replace maladaptive thoughts with more positive ones, which in turn improve your quality of life. CBT highlights that the way we think, feel and behave are all connected, Beck (1964) states that it is not a situation in and of itself that determines what people feel, but rather how they interpret a situation , which further instills the idea that how a person thinks is crucial to their mental well-being. In CBT sessions the therapist guides the patient to develop strategies that help him or her manage stressful situations that lead to having negative and distorted thoughts more effectively in the long term (Beck, 2011). CBT has been shown to be effective in the treatment of psychological disorders such as schizophrenia, more specifically the beneficial effect on positive symptoms which consist of delusions and/or hallucinations and on negative symptoms which consist of lack of emotions, loss of interest in daily activities and loss of difficult relationships with friends and family (Rector & Beck, 2001). Furthermore, Zimmerman et al., (2005) found substantial evidence that CBT is a rather promising adjunct to pharmacotherapy for schizophrenia patients suffering from acute psychosis rather than a more chronic condition. A more recent meta-analysis by Wykes and Collegues (2008) examined controlled studies of CBT for schizophrenia and confirmed the findings of previous meta-analyses, which suggests that CBT had a small effect size compared to conditions of control over positive and negative symptoms. Additionally, a review of satisfied analyzes was conducted by Hoffman et al (2012) who examined the effectiveness of CBT for several health disorders, including but not limited to; anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and substance use disorders. Of the 269 studies reviewed, an overwhelming amount of evidence supports the idea that CBT is effective in treating a range of psychological disorders. one particular meta-analysis compared the effectiveness of psychological treatment for specific phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorders, the results showed that CBT had the greatest effect for both disorders and was maintained for two years after treatment (Rumland and Margraf, 2001). From these results it can be deduced that CBT is the most effective treatment compared to others used and that the positive effects of CBT are long-lived as the symptoms are significantly improved over a long period of time. Yoshinaga et al, (2013) measured the effectiveness of CBT on Social Anxiety using the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale on a fairly small sample of 15 participants. The intervention took place over a fourteen week period, anxiety levels were measured by researchers before and after the intervention. CBT has been shown to be effective in reducing social levels, although there are numerous limitations. An increase in the sample size used would be more effective in identifying anomalies and differences that could influence the results collected; Furthermore, a control group composed of those who were taking drugs at the time of the study would be of great use as it would allow researchers to understand whether CBT alone was effective or rather a combination of drugs and CBT. A follow-up of this study would have been useful to determine whether the intervention had long-term effectiveness. Furthermore, a large sample of controlled studies of psychotherapy for adult depression were examined by Cuijpers et al (2010) to determine whether or not it was possible that publication bias was present: publication bias occurs when researchers they record and publish only the results they want,.2005.02.018