[slothtrop]

Colloquially "therapy" tends to refer to just talk-therapy. It's useful to the extent that talking out your issues with someone is useful, but at $100/h.

There are forms of therapy as interventions that are generally shown to be effective according to research (e.g. CBT and variants), and I think we'd be rid of a lot of confusion by better distinguishing one therapy from another.

[krageon]

You are describing a paid friend. That is indeed vapid and baseless. Therapy is something you seek for meaningful long-term change in an area of your life that you see as an impediment to living. All health care is (or should be) focused on that question: What do you see as a problem. If your therapist just wants to sit down to listen to you vent for an hour and asks for $100 for it, find a new therapist. Preferably one that went to school.

[slothtrop]

I am describing what it indeed often becomes, but even clients who describe it as such may still care to pay for the privilege. Ethics aside there's no rigorous standardized approach for general psychotherapy. A therapist can draw from any direction.

If seeing a therapist is to be maintained indefinitely, then it's not triggering meaningful long-term change. You can't chalk up a problem of this scale to a matter of education.

[krageon]

> You can't chalk up a problem of this scale to a matter of education.

Why can't I do that? It seems to me that if different countries have much better generalised psychotherapy results, I can absolutely ascribe that difference to education.