- Title
- Setting the bar higher: what information do we need to establish the effectiveness of mental health interventions for children with complex attachment- and trauma-related difficulties?
- Creator
- Tarren-Sweeney, Michael
- Relation
- Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry Vol. 18, Issue 1, p. 3-6
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1359104512467406
- Publisher
- Sage Publications
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- Editorial: Most readers will know that a culture and ideas battle is underway within our clinical professions and workplaces, around what kinds of knowledge we should use to guide our practice; how much weight we place on research findings about the effectiveness of psychological interventions; what parameters should define effectiveness and how should they be measured; and, most contentious of all, what constitutes an evidence-based intervention? Many of us have signed up to the underlying principle of evidence-based practice (EBP) so that our clinical work should be guided by the best available evidence. Where we mostly disagree, is on what constitutes ‘best available evidence’. This has been the topic of five previous Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry (CCPP) editorials, a measure of its importance for the journal’s readership (John Leventhal, July 2000; Nicholas Long, April 2008; Rudi Dallos and Arlene Vetere, Oct 2008; Eilis Kennedy, April 2009; and Nick Midgley, July, 2009). The conventional view is that this battle of ideas is driven by opposing epistemological positions – namely positivist, empirical science versus the belief that effective psychotherapy requires clinical experience and knowledge which eludes quantification, measurement and ‘manualisation’. This opposition is also rooted in a division between the research laboratory and the clinic, as well as a much earlier battle of ideas between behaviourism and psychoanalysis. One’s leaning towards these opposing positions is partly a consequence of being socialised within different professional traditions and, for some, in which university programme you were trained. It does not help that the principles of EBP are sometimes fervently (mindlessly?) enforced on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and other clinical services as a form of intellectual hegemony.
- Subject
- mental health; mental health interventions; children; children's health; attachment difficulties; trauma-related difficulties
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1063299
- Identifier
- uon:17249
- Identifier
- ISSN:1461-7021
- Language
- eng
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