> ... in 1952 in which H. J. Eyesenck, an English psychiatrist, divided thousands of World War II veterans hospitalized for mental illness into three groups. One group was treated by psychoanalysis, another was given other kinds of therapy, and the third received no treatment at all. The men were then measured on an "improvement scale" with these stunning results: 44 per cent improved with psychoanalysis, 64 per cent improved with other therapies, and 72 per cent got better with no treatment at all.
> More recently, Werner Mendel, professor of psychiatry at the University of Southern California, directed a similar study. Trained psychoanalysts treated the patients in the first group, less highly trained psychologists and psychotherapists treated the second group, and the third group was under the care of employees with no formal training. The improvement ratings showed the following remarkable results: the third group, treated by staff members without formal training in therapy, showed the most improvement, whereas the first group, treated by staff members with the most extensive training in psychotherapy, showed the least improvement. Understandably, Dr. Mendel was startled by the results and repeated the experiment, with the same outcome.
Now, I'm not going down this rabbit-hole (I did once and wasted a lot of time!) but there is a lot of evidence that just a bit of attention from another person may be helpful, and affective attention may work wonders.
[0] https://www.religion-online.org/article/sin-guilt-and-mental...