I remember in my psychology textbook and it said in terms of measured results therapy was better than nothing at all but no better than just chatting to friends. These things are hard to measure of course.
It's not the past anymore, we don't need to debate, we can watch and listen to actual recordings of therapy sessions and the patients going from feeling variously bad to better. Here's Dr David Burns channel with a 4hr video of a session with a woman who is obsessively anxious about her college-age daughter's safety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on2N5DsKHRk
Here's a 2.5 hour session (split into several videos) with a doctor who has a bad relationship with his son and felt like a failure for it:
Here's a couple of hour session with Marilyn who was diagnosed with lung cancer and spiraling with depression, anxiety, shame, loneliness, hopelessness, demoralization, and anger, despite her successful career:
It's like saying "it is still debated if debugging even works" as if all languages, all debuggers, all programmers, all systems, are the same and if you can find lots of people who can't debug then "debugging doesn't work". But no, you only need a few examples of "therapy working" to believe that it works, and see the whole session to see that it isn't just luck or just the relief of talking, but is a skill and a technique and a debugging of the mind.
The links you provided need a control group to be considered proof. The key is how it compares to when counseling was provided by just a friend, not an expert.
You don't think we'd all know it if "talking to a friend" for a couple of hours cured years of anxiety, depression, anger, sadness, hoplessness, anxiety, etc. ? Would we even have therapists/therapy if that were the case?
