The most generous interpretation of figures in this article is that NNTT for depression and therapy is 5. Meaning one out of every five people treated by therapy will show some improvement due to effects of therapy itself.

We can certainly call this effective in that there is an effect for some people who try therapy. But not for 80% of them.

Therapy is a 10 billion dollar/year industry in the United States, with its practitioners often charging desperately unhappy people high rates (beyond what most of us lucky software devs make), with no advantage to show for their various methodologies beyond what one gets from talking to an untrained stranger.

Financially successful yet largely bogus businesses and industries are never going to put themselves out of business and have little impetus to change the status quo.

Awareness of the current poor options for mental health treatment is important. However uncomfortable or against an established narrative of "help is out there' it is to address these realities, it will be easier to marshall efforts to finding real mental health solutions if we aren't pretending the current paradigms are working when the numbers show otherwise.