Bridging the Gap Between Laboratory and Clinic in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapydoi: 10.1037/0022-006X.63.5.688pmid: N/A
Meta-analyses of laboratory outcome studies reveal beneficial effects of psychotherapy with children and adolescents. However, the research therapy in most of those lab studies differs from everyday clinic therapy in several ways, and the 9 studies of clinic therapy the authors have found show markedly poorer outcomes than research therapy studies. These findings suggest a need to bridge the long-standing gap between outcome researchers and clinicians. Three kinds of bridging research are proposed and illustrated: (a) enriching the research data base on treatment effects by practitioners in clinical settings—including private practice and health maintenance organizations, (b) identifying features of research therapy that account for positive outcomes and applying those features to clinical practice, and (c) exporting lab-tested treatments to clinics and assessing their effects with referred youths. If these bridging strategies were widely adopted, despite the numerous obstacles described herein, real progress might be made toward more effective treatment in clinical practice.
Bridging the Gap Between Laboratory and Clinic in Child and Adolescent PsychotherapyWeisz, John R.; Donenberg, Geri R.; Han, Susan S.; Weiss, Bahr
doi: 10.1037/0022-006X.63.5.688pmid: N/A
Meta-analyses of laboratory outcome studies reveal beneficial effects of psychotherapy with children and adolescents. However, the research therapy in most of those lab studies differs from everyday clinic therapy in several ways, and the 9 studies of clinic therapy the authors have found show markedly poorer outcomes than research therapy studies. These findings suggest a need to bridge the long-standing gap between outcome researchers and clinicians. Three kinds of bridging research are proposed and illustrated: (a) enriching the research data base on treatment effects by practitioners in clinical settings—including private practice and health maintenance organizations, (b) identifying features of research therapy that account for positive outcomes and applying those features to clinical practice, and (c) exporting lab-tested treatments to clinics and assessing their effects with referred youths. If these bridging strategies were widely adopted, despite the numerous obstacles described herein, real progress might be made toward more effective treatment in clinical practice.
Issues in the Transportability of Treatment: The Case of Anxiety Disorders in Youthsdoi: 10.1037/0022-006X.63.5.702pmid: N/A
This article reviews factors working against or in favor of the transportability of manual-based child treatments from research clinics to service practitioners. The review examines client factors, service-clinic therapist factors, and researcher factors that may contribute to the reported gap between research and practice outcomes. As requested for this special section, this article uses work with anxiety-disordered youths as an example of a potentially transportable manual-based treatment. Issues and future directions are discussed.
Multisystemic Therapy: Bridging the Gap Between University- and Community-Based TreatmentHenggeler, Scott W.; Schoenwald, Sonja K.; Pickrel, Susan G.
doi: 10.1037/0022-006X.63.5.709pmid: N/A
This article proposes, within the context of discouraging findings from child psychotherapy literatures, 2 theory- and empirically based explanations for the emergent success of multisystemic therapy (MST) when implemented in community settings as well as for MST's favorable long-term effects on serious antisocial behavior in adolescents. First, MST may have demonstrated success in community settings because it explicitly bridges the gap between university-based psychotherapy studies and their community-based counterparts (J. R. Weisz & B. Weiss, 1993).Second, although MST is based on a social-ecological model of behavior, its favorable cross-setting and temporal outcomes may exemplify the successful use of several active behavioral generalization strategies.
Multisystemic Therapy: Bridging the Gap Between University- and Community-Based Treatmentdoi: 10.1037/0022-006X.63.5.709pmid: N/A
This article proposes, within the context of discouraging findings from child psychotherapy literatures, 2 theory- and empirically based explanations for the emergent success of multisystemic therapy (MST) when implemented in community settings as well as for MST's favorable long-term effects on serious antisocial behavior in adolescents. First, MST may have demonstrated success in community settings because it explicitly bridges the gap between university-based psychotherapy studies and their community-based counterparts (J. R. Weisz & B. Weiss, 1993).Second, although MST is based on a social-ecological model of behavior, its favorable cross-setting and temporal outcomes may exemplify the successful use of several active behavioral generalization strategies.
Improving the Transition From Basic Efficacy Research to Effectiveness Studies: Methodological Issues and Proceduresdoi: 10.1037/0022-006X.63.5.718pmid: N/A
This article proposes methodological strategies that, if used in treatment outcome research, may help in the transition of efficacy research findings into effectiveness trials in clinical and service delivery settings. Alternative methodologies are proposed to examine how treatment effectiveness may vary as a function of degree of treatment structure, treatment protocol compliance, psychotherapy integration into an overall treatment regimen, participant selection and composition, and variations in treatment parameters. The discussion focuses on encouraging the retention of experimental control while stretching psychotherapy outcome research designs to encompass effectiveness issues.