What does research show about effectiveness of counseling?
According to a research summary from the Stanford University School of Medicine, counseling effectively decreased peoples’ depression and anxiety related symptoms, such as pain, fatigue, and nausea. Counseling has also been found to increase survival time after heart surgery, for people with cancer, and it can have positive effects on the body’s immune system. Research increasingly supports the idea that emotional and physical health are closely linked and that counseling can improve a person’s overall health status. There is convincing evidence that most people who have several sessions of counseling are better off than untreated individuals who are having emotional difficulties.