Evidence based treatment

What is Evidence Based Treatment? (EBT)

Evidence based treatment (EBT) in psychology is the integration of the most current and accurate research with clinical expertise. It takes multiple factors into consideration, such as patient values and empirically supported principles. It is often the next step after Evidence Based Assessment of clinical disorders.

What are its acronyms?

1. EBT: Evidence-based treatment
2. EST: Empirically supported treatments
   1. The EST is a more specific treatment that utilizes controlled trials to establish its psychological efficaciousness. It goes from a certain disorder to disorder and circumstances.
3. EBP: evidence-based practice
4. EBPP:
   1. EBPP is a more comprehensive definition of EBP. It starts at the patient and uses research evidence to determine the best outcome to assist the psychologist. Additionally, EBPP takes a lot of clinical activities into account, such as psychological assessment, therapy relationships, and case formulation. EBPP integrates various streams of research information into the process.

What is its purpose?

1. EBT serves to advocate for better patient outcomes by utilizing current research to inform clinicians.
2. EBT in psychology advocates for improved patient outcomes through utilizing relevant research to inform clinical practice ((Sox & Woolf, 1993; Woolf & Atkins, 2001, Levant et. al, 2005)
3. There are two dimensions of evaluating research that the APA policy identifies with. The first is focused on treatment efficacy, while the second is the clinical utility. The second dimension also includes determining the generalizability of an intervention.
4. EBPP promotes effective psychological practice and promote the public health through the application of empirically supported principles of assessment.
5. The purpose of evidence-based practice is to deliver guidelines for best practice in all realms of healthcare. In the beginning stages of establishing guidelines, there was a focus on a comprehensive approach. However, one risk that arose was guidelines being inappropriately used by commercial healthcare organizations that are not experienced with treatment and practice for patients/clients.
6. Evidence-based practice is consistent with the work of evidence-based medicine, with the goal of improving patient outcomes with appropriate research results (Sox & Woolf, 1993; Woolf & Atkins, 2001). Thus, health care providers are responsible for pushing the movement of improved evidence-based practice.

What has been its impact on the clinical world in general?

The research on the efficacy of psychological interventions shows that they are safe and effective for a wide range of populations, including children and youths, adults, and older adults.

Who uses it?

• Psychologists have been the main developers of evidence based practice.
• Psychologists play a large role in continuing the development of EBP, since their training is grounded in empirical methods.

Research Designs

• Hypotheses and new ideas can be found in basic psychological science as well as clinical observations
• Hypotheses can also be derived from qualitative research like case studies where subjective experiences can be used
• These hypotheses can be supported by taking several case studies and comparing similar characteristics of the patients establishing relationships between individuals.
• Public health and ethnographic research are good ways of tracking how well-established evidence-based practice is, from availability, acceptance and how often it is used.
• Process-outcome studies and randomized clinical trials are then used to find the most effective changes
• Meta-analysis allows for the combination of all the above to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed treatments.

Issues

• There is still a gap between science and practice for practicing evidence based treatment for many mental health disorders around the world . For example, many people in the United States and the United Kingdom received less psychological therapies than medication, and “no Western country reports patients are getting their preference for psychological therapies.”
• Some issues with EBT include deciding how much weight to place on which different research methods since there are so many. Another issue is the representativeness of certain research samples. The generalizability and transportability of the treatments supported in the controlled research to actual clinical settings is something that is of concern as well.

Use in other populations/Generalizability

• A wide range of research is able to inform psychological practice. This includes ethnography, cross-cultural psychology, and even psychological anthropology. Culture influences many different variables in psychological practice, as well as within the nature and expression of psychopathology.

Future directions

There are several future paths that could be followed including the comparison between psychological and pharmacological treatments as well as the accessibility and utilization of treatments, however the most important would be analyzing treatments within different populations. There is a lack of evidence on the efficacy and effectiveness of practice within underrepresented groups characterized gender identity, race, social class etc. as well as older adults and younger children. There should also be a continued meta-analysis into how well received and effective treatments are, as well as what criteria to follow when deciding to discontinue a specific treatment. A look into current established treatments could also lead to valuable changes in current treatment.

Evidence-Based Treatment for Specific Disorders in Adolescents

1. Substance Use Disorder- Family Based Therapy
2. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
3. Bipolar Disorder