I hate to derail this too far but can't help but jump in here, since this is an issue I feel very strongly about.
Just bc there is evidence doesn't mean it's good evidence.
This. As an example, Case studies can certainly be useful, but are not great for establishing efficacy. They perhaps establish that a person "can" get better under that circumstance, but do not let you infer causation. They are absolutely important and necessary parts of science and the treatment literature, but they have significant limitations on what you can draw from them. Other things do too (i.e. RCTs, Meta-analyses), so a great deal of care needs to go into reading these articles to make sure you are drawing appropriate inferences from them. More care than I think many psychologists are adequately prepared for, which is why I am such a strong proponent of appropriate scientific training, even for people with no desire to do research at any point in their career.
EBT uses an evidence hierarchy. Not all "evidence" is equal. Jim telling me he wears a crystal on his wrist that helps him quit smoking is "evidence" too. However, I don't think anyone would consider it to be on the same level as even a well-designed case study, let alone an exhaustive review of the entire treatment literature for a disorder by a panel of 30 experts. Treatments with a larger volume of higher quality evidence are considered "first-line" treatments. If treatment fails, the client is unwilling to agree to it (i.e. exposure), or it is inappropriate for an individual client (for client-based reasons not just therapist preference), then you move to the next best-supported treatment. I think most will agree it describes an ideal that can rarely be met perfectly, but seems a reasonable goal and is certainly the direction the field is going. It certainly does not include only CBT...that is just flat out untrue and though most will agree that it is probably the front-runner in many situations, I think you will be hard-pressed to find a single person within the movement who would argue it exclusively refers to CBT. Though we risk blurring the lines between EBT and EST, it generally includes many non-CBT treatments. DBT, IPT, even some brief psychodynamic treatments, as well as some of third-wave therapies (mindfulness, ACT).
Also, I grow weary of people citing the dodo bird on this board. Please read the literature yourself before leaping on the bandwagon, because I think you will find that the evidence to support it is often much weaker than its proponents pretend (i.e. requires collapsing across disorders, substantive differences in implementation, inferences drawn on modalities that weren't even studied). That isn't to say there isn't some merit to it, and plenty of merit to some of the broader themes (i.e. importance of non-specific factors). However, I think it is all too often not read with a critical eye and I'm always unclear why the dodo bird evidence is for some reason treated as the holy grail of scientific evidence by many on this board and elsewhere, when other equally good scientific evidence to the contrary is summarily dismissed.
