by Michael D. Anestis, M.S.
Without question, we at PBB have opinions on the topics we discuss. We wholeheartedly believe that mental health care should be driven by results accumulated through scientific studies. We believe therapists are not magicians bestowed with the ability to use intuition to accurately assess and treat their clients. We also believe that it is imperative that therapists treat their clients with empirically supported treatments.
As is the case with most things, our position is not held in universally positive regard throughout the field. In fact, there are many people who believe that science has no place in clinical psychology and others who misinterpret the data and conclude that science tells us that all treatments work equally well for all mental illnesses. Today, I would like to address this situation by providing you with links to a number of articles we have written on the topic this year so that you can evaluate the evidence on both sides and develop your own informed opinion. In addition to the articles we have written, I highly recommend consulting the work of Paul Meehl and Karl Popper. Both men wrote incredibly influential and brilliant works on the importance of scientific-mindedness, although admittedly both wrote in a manner that made it difficult to wade through all of their material in one sitting without developing a bit of a headache.
With respect to PBB articles, I would recommend opening with our discussion of how we determine whether or not a particular therapy for a particular condition is empirically supported (click here).
From there, I would recommend reading our discussion on why group data is important even though we are all individuals (click here).
My next recommendation would be an article we wrote on how treatments for anxiety disorders that have been shown to work in controlled trials have also been shown to work in "real world" practice (click here). Along those same lines, I would recommend that you consult our article discussing how, even when therapists are trained in empirically supported treatments for eating disorders, they rarely implement them in their practice (click here).
My next suggestion would be consulting our articles on the "dodo bird hypothesis," which states that all forms of therapy work equally well for all conditions (click here and here). This conclusion is dangerous and inaccurate, but is also espoused by many influential figures and, as such, has maintained a ridiculous amount of traction. Additionally, you may want to read our recent article on the importance of comparative treatment trials that can accurately determine whether one treatment is superior to another for a particular condition or set of conditions (click here).
My next suggestion would be to read our article on whether or not therapeutic alliance accounts for success in therapy (click here), then to consult our recent article on how sudden gains occur in therapy and what they mean in terms of whether or not a client gets better and avoids relapse (click here).
Finally, I would recommend that you read our article on an influential paper published a couple months ago that successfully called a lot of attention to the gap between what scientists have shown to be true and effective and what is actually implemented in clinical practice (click here) as well as our article on a subsequent NPR program that covered the topic (click here). You can listen to the NPR program for free by following the links in the article.
The comment sections in these articles remain open and we would love to hear your thoughts and/or questions. If you would like to learn more about these or other topics discussed on PBB, we hope you will consult our online store for scientifically-based psychological resources.
Mike Anestis is a doctoral candidate in the clinical psychology department at Florida State University.
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