No Evidence That Framing Depression as a Functional Signal, Not a Disease Is Helpful
Overzealous authors destroyed their study as a pre-registered, randomized controlled trial in a triumph of ideology over science.
Researchers should not go fishing for the positive results [ Photo: John Carver / No Fishing & Electrical Danger Sign /wikimedia]
There’s a lot of gushing on social media about a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that is purported to show the benefits of encouraging laypersons to drop discussion of depression as a disease and instead frame it as a functional signal.
In more modest and prosaic terms, these researchers exposed nondepressed persons who had never been in treatment for depression to videos of brief vignettes delivered by a computer program that framed depression either as a functional signal or a disease. Effects of this manipulation were measured with the lay persons’ answers to questions about their attitudes and beliefs regarding depressed mood.
This is an analog study, not an evaluation of an actual psychotherapy intervention in a clincial setting. The barebones experimental manipulation has a dubious connection to anything in the world of a clinically depressed person s…