And sure- I’ll bite. For the sake of everyone’s enlightenment- please post a link to the studies that show that clinicians who get on-line doctorates practice evidence based therapies at equivalent rates and get outcomes across diagnoses and settings that are equivalent to those who get doctorates from APA accredited B&M programs.
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Ah, to my knowledge, no research has compared the treatment outcomes of B&M students vs online students, so that remains an open question. My argument is that b&m phds have no evidence to claim treatment outcome superiority over clinicians with any other type or level of training, including online psyd trainees. For example, I've never seen any evidence that phd's produce better outcomes than master's level clinicians. I've seen studies finding no differences, but none that found superior outcomes for psychologists. If you know of any, I'd sure love to see them because I've scoured the databases and have come up dry.
But I have found the following studies, basically reviews of the relevant literature:
After a review of the relevant literature comparing the effect sizes of amount and type of training, Beutler et al., (2004) concluded that "no clear pattern of effects were observable..." (p. 239).
After his review, uber-psychotherapy outcome researcher (and my hero) Wampold (2017, p. 59) stated that "Generally...the profession of the therapist (e.g. psychology, psychiatry, social work, professional counseling) does not predict outcome."
Miller, Hubble and Chow (2018) take it even further after their review in challenging the effects of rigorous psychotherapy training by concluding that "Study after study reveals that degreed professionals perform no better than students" (p. 2).
Last, but not least, in the most pointed critique of psychologist training, Malouff (2011) reviewed the literature and succinctly concluded that "Overall research findings provide little support for the idea that typical professional training of psychologists leads to better outcomes for their psychotherapy clients" (p. 29). Ouch! Hey Malouff, couldn't you soften it at least a little bit? But no--he then piles on with "There appears to be no evidence to suggest that coursework and research completion, which make up a great deal of required psychology training, have any value to future psychotherapy clients of the students" (p. 30). I also recommend Ladany's (2007) entertaining review of the same topic. His article had me laughing out loud.
None of this is to say that the above conclusions are the final word on the matter. Yet, I haven't found any reviews of the outcome literature (or any individual studies for that matter) arguing for superior outcomes for psychologists. Yet, psychotherapy outcome research is messy and controversial. Moreover, research comparing outcomes of clinicians with different training backgrounds really hasn't been thoroughly investigated. On considering the "...dearth of research investigating client outcomes across counselor training levels...", Nyman et al., (2011) speculated that "It may be that researchers are loathe to face the possibility that the extensive efforts involved in educating graduate students to become licensed professionals results in no observable differences in client outcome" (p. 12).
Thus, although there is no research investigating outcomes of b&m vs online clinicians that I'm aware of, given the dreary findings comparing psychologists' outcomes with everybody else (e.g. paraprofessionals, students, master's level clinicians), what would be the evidentiary basis for claims that b&m psychologists generate superior treatment outcomes over primarily online-trained psychologists? Maybe the evidence will exist someday, but until it does, and in light of the above research findings, I'm skeptical of psychologists' claims of treatment outcome superiority over anybody. Like I said, if anyone here has any relevant outcome research to the contrary, I'd genuinely love to see it.
I really don't expect to persuade the minds of regular posters on this board; I'm not that naive. But for the many lurkers, and surely there are many, I hope to present a divergent viewpoint from the majority at SDN. Who knows, maybe I'll post again some day if they don't ban me from the site 😛.
Beutler et al. (2004). Therapist Variables. In Bergin and Garfield's handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change, 5th ed.
Ladany, N. (2007). Does psychotherapy training matter? Maybe not. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 44(4), 392-396.
Malouff, J. (2012). The need for empirically supported psychology training standards. Psychotherapy in Australia, 18(3), 28-32
Miller, S. D., Hubble, M. A., & Chow, D. (2018). The question of expertise in psychotherapy. Journal of Expertise, 1(2), 121-129.
Nyman, S. J., Nafziger, M. A., & Smith, T. B. (2010). Client Outcomes Across Counselor Training Level Within a Multitiered Supervision Model. Journal of counseling and development, 88, 204-209.
Wampold, B. E. (2017). What should we practice? A contextual model (hey look! contextual model! get it?) for how psychotherapy works. In T. Rousmaniere, R. K. Goodyear, S. D. Miller, & B. E. Wampold (Eds.), The cycle of excellence: Using deliberate practice to improve supervision and training (pp. 49-67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.