I agree that the statement that there are no risks with psychotherapy is very naive at best and out and out damaging in and of itself at worse. Even with therapists that don't cross the unethical lines, psychotherapy has the potential to do damage if the therapist is not a good match with the client.

As for the getting worse before better....it took me about 6 months before I started to see enough "betters" to know that things were moving in a positive way. Even with that there have been several periods of regression and in fact, I am either just getting out of a pretty good slide back in depression (the last 2 months) or still in it, just having a good day.