The Center for Effective Therapy (CET) at the Baker Center for Children and Families specializes in providing evidence-based treatments that have been proven to be effective, hence the name! But what makes evidence-based treatments different from care as usual that you may find elsewhere?
Evidence-based treatments have been developed through years of scientific research and clinical practice to best understand mental health disorders, their underlying functions, and how best to treat them. Not all mental health treatments for children and teens have been proven to be effective, but evidence-based treatments and the clinicians who are trained in them, specialize clinical and research knowledge to address mental health disorders and target symptoms that create dysfunction and distress. Many different evidence-based treatments exist to address a variety of presenting problems and mental health concerns. In research processes, treatments are closely evaluated and compared to others in large studies called clinical trials, which provides the field with evidence about which treatment approaches are most helpful for which kinds of mental health difficulties.
Clinicians who use evidence-based treatments, including our clinicians here at CET, receive specific training in treatment approaches, which provides a level of quality assurance that the treatment being provided aligns with the treatment studied in the research. A lot of care and effort is put into evaluating current research to stay in tune with best practices in the mental health field, to ensure that the highest quality of care possible is being delivered. From the research angle, efforts include studying evidence-based approaches with increasingly diverse and complex patient populations, to make sure that these interventions are culturally adapted and tailored for your individual child’s concerns. In addition, many evidence-based treatments require data collection and monitoring of symptoms to track the effectiveness of the intervention for the child. This data monitoring is used to inform the future direction of treatment and help the clinician understand if they are administering the treatment in adherence to the protocol. Progress monitoring also helps the clinician adjust the approach to your child’s specific needs, working to provide high fidelity and flexible interventions that are culturally tailored. Often, this process will look different for each kind of evidence-based treatment. The collection and sharing of data in any approach can help caregivers and the child stay motivated and reflect on progress that has been made in the treatment process.
Evidence-based treatments often emphasize helping the child and caregivers learn proven skills and strategies for managing difficult thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The goal of a clinician is to provide information, and practice strategies, to the point where the clients can effectively become their own therapists, equipped with a toolbox of evidence-based skills. This process often includes completing homework between sessions, completing surveys to track symptoms, and live practice in sessions to master skills. By nature, evidence-based treatments tend to be shorter term, often being completed with noticeable progress in 20 sessions or less.
If your clinician is providing evidence-based treatments, they will be confident that their approach will work for you, because they have seen it work with many other families, in addition to having the scientific research back them up. It is very common to prioritize going to a doctor with medical training based on scientific research, and mental health treatment should be treated the same. By valuing evidence-based treatments, you are deciding to take the path with the best scientific support, and the highest chance at success in therapy.
Ask your child’s therapist what approach they are using, and if it is evidence-based, they should be able to tell you the name of the treatment, point you towards research if you are interested in that, and explain to you why the treatment will work for your specific child’s needs. A great sign is if a thorough assessment is done prior to deciding on a treatment pathway, to ensure that the right approach is selected.
Want to learn more?
- Book an appointment for treatment
- Contact us
- Watch our evidence-based treatments webinar
- Read What Evidence Based Treatments are Offered at the Center for Effective Therapy?