Almost all the empirical evidence showing that psychotherapy improves other relationships comes from studies of people suffering from depression or schizophrenia. But treatments for these conditions usually explicitly focus on expanding social functioning. Schwartz's concern is that too many clients wind up substituting their relationship with their therapist for outside relationships, a situation that the Swedish study suggests may be the case.

Since Schwartz wrote about his concerns in the September/October 2005 Harvard Review of Psychiatry, he still hasn't seen any more research on therapists' impact on clients' social connections. In the absence of data confirming or contradicting the Swedish study, Schwartz strongly advises therapists to focus on how clients spend their time outside of sessions and with whom.

Abused Children of Iraq War Soldiers

We hear almost daily of the soldiers killed and wounded in the Iraq war and of the high incidence of PTSD. But for several years, there've been only hints and whispers about another long-term problem in the making: how parents' deployment affects their children.

Anecdotal reports from school counselors note that children's discipline problems rise and grades fall following a parent's deployment. A small study in the January 2007 journal Military Medicine by physiologist Vernon Barnes found that adolescents with a deployed parent were more likely to have elevated physical and emotional stress levels. A 2005 report from the Military Family Research Institute of Purdue University (MFRI) notes that many adolescents with a deployed parent report symptoms of depression.

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