Where is the Evidence for “Evidence-Based” Therapy?*

Where is the Evidence for Evidence - based Therapy?* Jonathan Shedler Evidence - based therapy has become quite the term Evidence - based comes from medicine. It gainedattention in the 1990s and was, at the time, a call for criticalthinking. It reflected the recognition that we ve always done itthis way is not a good enough reason to keep doing decisions should reflect clinical judgment, patients values and preferences, and relevant scientific Evidence - based has come to mean something very dif-ferent in the psychotherapy world. The term has been appropri-ated to promote a particular ideology and agenda. It has becomea code word for manualisedtreatment most often, brief, highly-structured cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Manualised means the therapy is literally conducted by following an instruc-tion manual. The treatment may be pre-scripted in a way thatleaves little room for understanding patients as the Evidence - based therapy movement lies what Iwill call the master narrative , a narrative that increasinglydominates the mental health landscape.

Here is a small taste of what proponents of “evidence-based” therapy have been saying in public: “The empirically supportive psychotherapies are still not widely practiced.

Tags:

  Based, Evidence based, Evidence, Is the evidence for evidence based

Information

Related search queries