🦉 Fun Fact: Did you know? A meta-analysis is like a mega-scientific poll. It collects data from multiple studies to find common trends, which gives us a more robust answer to our questions! In this case, the question is: "Does psychotherapy work?"

• Eysenck, a famous psychologist, once claimed that psychotherapy doesn't work. He said 67% of outpatients recovered without treatment, a rate similar to that of those who received psychotherapy.
• Think of it like this: Imagine going to a restaurant and paying for a delicious meal, but you leave feeling just as hungry as when you came in. That's how Eysenck viewed psychotherapy!
• But note, at this time, 'randomized controlled trials' (think of them as the "Golden Standard" for testing treatments) were not widely used. Hence, Eysenck's data may have had some quality issues.

• Smith and Glass crunched numbers from 375 studies and found that therapy does work! The typical therapy client was better off than 75% of untreated individuals.
• Real-world example: Imagine a class of 100 students where 75 didn't study for a test and scored low marks, while the remaining 25, who did study, scored much higher. Here, studying represents therapy and the high scores reflect better mental health outcomes.