Too good to be true

“100% effective!”

Most claims that a treatment or intervention will ‘make’ a service user 100% better, ‘cure’ multiple conditions, or that it will ‘work for everyone’, turn out to be wrong.

The effects of some interventions are obvious. For example, with medications you can often see a clear reduction or complete cure of symptoms and they tend to have the same effect for most people who experience those symptoms.

However, in speech and language therapy, the effects of most treatments are not going to be entirely ‘curative’ or that obvious. Often, the aims for therapy may be ‘compensatory’. For example, it is unlikely to completely get rid of the word finding difficulties of every person who has had a stroke, and claims that intervention can do this should be treated with caution.

BEWARE when someone says that a treatment is “100% effective”, “cure” multiple conditions, or that “it will work for all of your clients”.

REMEMBER: With the complex skills we support our service users with in SLT, it is unlikely our interventions will be 100% effective with everyone. We should be careful to critically consider any interventions or products that claim they have achieved this level of success.