Process-Based Therapy as a Model of Evidence-Based Work - Part I

For decades, evidence-based therapies have been tested in randomized controlled trials for specific psychiatric syndromes that were assumed to represent expressions of latent diseases. Although the best of these protocols were more effective as compared to control conditions, further advancement in efficacy and dissemination has been slow. In this talk I will explain why process-based therapy (PBT) will soon the dominant perspective on evidence-based psychological interventions and why this change will open up a number of opportunities to bring together traditions, and researcher and providers. I will explain why evidence-based therapy also has no scientifically legitimate alternative other than a fairly radical turn in the direction of analyses that are based on the individual first and nomothetic principles second – what PBT advocates are calling an “idionomic” approach. I will show how these methods will help practitioners tailor interventions to target the particular processes of change needed by a given individual -- if effect finally providing an idiographic and clinically useful alternative to the DSM.