Psychiatry's ID Problem

I have lost count of the times that clients have told me that they were prescribed anti-depressants and/or benzos and their prescriber never once mentioned therapy as an alternative or in conjunction with the use of meds. I came across this opinion piece and have personally heard more than a few psychiatrist’s echo the sentiments. :

First, psychotherapy has been shown in scores of well-controlled clinical trials to be as effective as psychotropic medication for very common psychiatric illnesses like major depression and anxiety disorders; second, a majority of Americans clearly prefer psychotherapy to taking medication. For example, in a meta-analysis of 34 studies, Dr. R. Kathryn McHugh at McLean Hospital found that patients were three times more likely to want psychotherapy than psychotropic drugs.
Finally, many of our patients have histories of trauma, sexual abuse, the stress of poverty or deprivation. There is obviously no quick biological fix for these complex problems.

  The advances in medication has been minimal.

With few exceptions, every major class of current psychotropic drugs — antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety medications — basically targets the same receptors and neurotransmitters in the brain as did their precursors, which were developed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Sure, the newer drugs are generally safer and more tolerable than the older ones, but they are no more effective.
Even the new brain stimulatory treatments like repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation don’t come close to the efficacy of electroconvulsive treatment, developed in the 1940s. (Deep brain stimulation is promising as a treatment for intractable depression, but it is an invasive treatment and little is known about its long-term safety or efficacy.)

Below is a link to the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/opinion/psychiatrys-identity-crisis.html?_r=0