Profs & Pints Alameda: What Therapy Works

Profs and Pints Alameda presents: “What Therapy Works,” a guide to finding effective treatment and sifting out fads, charlatans and snake oil, with Trevor M. Ahrendt, licensed clinical psychologist, former lecturer in psychology and new clinician trainer at the Wright Institute, and co-founder of the San Francisco Therapy Group and board member of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group.

[Tickets available only online, at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/alameda-therapy .]

The world of psychotherapy has a problem: While we’re quite sure it works, we don’t know exactly how. Moreover, diagnoses don’t necessarily point to the most effective treatment—five people with depression might each need a different cure—and no brand of therapy necessarily predicts successful outcomes.

Meanwhile, there are more than 600 types of therapy out there now, many associated with gurus who persuasively champion their brands. Simply identifying what they are can mean sorting through an alphabet soup of acronyms such as IFS, CBT, DBT, or ACT. Meanwhile, therapists who are practicing the exact same brands often approach clients in very different ways. Complicating matters are claims being made about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics such as Ketamine, Psilocybin, and MDMA.

Come to Faction Brewing in Alameda for a talk that will help you separate fact from fiction and fad from genuine advancement in the field when it comes to finding the right therapist for you.

The speaker, Trevor Ahrendt, will draw from the findings of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group (SFPRG), a nonprofit organization founded more than 50 years ago to conduct evidence-based studies of how psychotherapy works and why some therapeutic approaches help some people but not others.

Dr. Ahrendt, a member of research organization’s board, will offer you a foundational new way of understanding therapy, one that guides treatment more effectively than diagnoses can.

He’ll talk about how researchers associated with the SFPRG synthesized the findings of neuroscience, evolutionary theory, and traditional therapy to develop an overarching model for understanding why therapy works across approaches, how therapy succeeds or fails, and why certain therapists succeed more often.

If you’re curious about therapy or have wondered why therapy worked (or didn’t) for you, you’ll benefit from learning about this research and how it can be applied directly to your life. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

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