Research on Negative Effects of Psychotherapies: The Next Steps

First, do no harm” is an important injunction that has been acknowledged widely in the broader biomedical field since the 1860s. In the field of psychotherapy and psychological interventions, this decree has only relatively recently been considered as one of the core issues in research and practice. For a long time it has been assumed that negative effects are not so relevant in psychological interventions. Because psychotherapy is “only talking,” it was assumed that no possible harm could be done and patients rarely raise such issues. Although the importance of negative effects of psychotherapies has been described for several decades, it is relatively recent that this is considered an important subject for research and clinical practice of psychotherapies. The study on negative effects in a guided, webbased intervention for mild to moderate depression in this issue (Oehler et al., 2021, p. 131) shows that negative effects are taken more seriously in recent years by researchers, and it fits in a trend to focus more research on these negative effects. It also shows that negative effects, when broadly defined, are quite common in psychological interventions, at least in webbased psychological interventions