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.

That's a hopeless generalization. People have many different problems and there are many different modalities of psychotherapy that try to address them.

Treating less severe forms of anxiety with CBT is going to be a lot more successful than treating deeply rooted personality disorders using any modality. Some problems are more suitable for CBT, and others are more suitable for EMDR, etc.

Just chatting to friends isn't enough unless you're just dealing with relatively mild, garden variety loneliness, depression, anxiety, or something similar.