Syzygy, Science, and Psychotherapy: The Consumer Reports Study  Kenneth I. Howard, Merton S. Krause, Charlene A. Caburnay, Susan B. Noel Northwestern University  Stephen M. Saunders Marquette University Results from a Consumer Reports (CR) survey indicated that psychother- apy has proven to be quite effective and that longer-term therapy has been more effective than shorter-term therapy. Critiques of the methodol- ogy of this study have included the claim that (a) the self-selected sample was biased in favor of people who felt that they had benefited from psy- chotherapy, (b) the use of retrospective accounts led to a further positive bias, and (c) the validity of the outcome assessment was questionable. Supplemental data from other sources, including prospective data from a large sample of psychotherapy patients, are presented to augment the interpretation of the results of the CR study and to illustrate how some critiques of research results can be evaluated systematically. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 57: 865–874, 2001. Keywords: therapeutic outcomes; patient satisfaction; Consumer Reports study; benefits of psychotherapy In a world of third-party payers, managed-care conglomerates, and government regula- tions, mental-health providers have to document their effectiveness (as well as their costs). Effectiveness surveys of treated patients seem to be the most relevant basis for this doc- This is an extended version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Associ- ation, Toronto, August 11, 1996. This work was partially supported by grants RO1 MH42901 and KO5 MH00924 from the National Institute of Mental Health. We are grateful for the statistical work of Bruce Briscoe and Laura Dietzen and the critique of the Northwestern/ Chicago Psychotherapy Research Group. It is with great sadness that we note the passing of Kenneth I. Howard before the publication of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Stephen M. Saunders, Department of Psychol- ogy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53233-1881. JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 57(7), 865–874 (2001) © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.