What does evidence-based practice have to offer?

[MeghanHF]

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What do you think works in psychotherapy and how do we know? I think about this a lot as it relates to patient care and the future of our profession (i.e. research grants and awards, and insurance reimbursements). Since evidence-based research is being applied to certain areas of the mental health field but not others I also wonder if we're asking the right questions and who's asking them. For instance, not a lot of dynamically oriented folks seem interested in empirically testing the efficacy of their approach when compared to other interventions. Is this because it's an ineffective approach or there is lack of support for this kind of research in the therapeutic-analytic community?

 

[50960]

Over the last 20 years there has been alot of research into what modality works best, but CBT aside, most modalities have proven to be relatively equally effective across populations and diagnoses.
Having said that there are still many folks who do many things in psych that have no empirical support at all, and this is still accepted in our field... 🙁
I think EBM is psych is the way to go if we want to move into the role of a health care provider and out of the role of a witch-doctor!

 

[psychgeek]

I think the value of evidence-based medicine all depends upon how narrowly the field defines “evidence.” Right now there are a lot of problems with the EST dogma. Theory and practice are often designed around convenient experimental methods rather than the other way around. However, I do think this is changing. As the flaws and limitations of previous psychotherapy research become more apparent the definition of evidence appears to be adjusting. The emerging focus on effectiveness trials and large simple studies seem to be a reflection of this adjustment.

 

[PsychEval]

The quacks in our field are the ones most threatened by EBT.