The evidence for evidence-based therapy is not as clear as we thought

an article by Alexander Williams and John Sakaluk published by the Big Think blog

Scientists often find that they cannot replicate prior findings.

Over the past decade, many scholars have questioned the credibility of research across a variety of scientific fields.

Some of these concerns arise from cases of outright fraud or other misconduct. More troubling are difficulties in replicating previous research findings. Replication is cast as a cornerstone of science: we can trust the results originating in one lab only if other labs can follow similar procedures and get similar results. But in many areas of research – including psychology – scientists have found that too often they cannot replicate prior findings.

As psychologists specialising in clinical work (Alexander Williams) and methodology (John Sakaluk), we wondered what these concerns mean for psychotherapy. Over the past 50 years, therapy researchers have increasingly embraced the evidence-based practice movement. Just as medicines are pitted against placebos in research studies, psychologists have used randomised clinical trials to test whether certain therapies (eg, 'exposure therapy', or systematically confronting what one fears) benefit people with certain mental-health conditions (eg, a phobia of spiders). The treatment-for-diagnosis combinations that have amassed evidence from these trials are known as empirically supported treatments (ESTs).

Continue reading

This is not the only article I have read recently that queries the robustness of some of the research into therapeutic treatments. It is, however, more readable for lay-people than some of the others.

Labels:
mental_health, health_care, emotions, depression, psychology,

---