How Do You Know You Are Offering an Evidence-based Practice? A Tool to Evaluate the Merits of Therapies

In this course, Dr. Carlos Zalaquett, Ph.D., Professor at the Pennsylvania State University, poses the question of how a therapist may know that he or she is offering the client an evidence-based practice. While as mental health professionals we may expect to do that – and further hold that we have an ethical obligation to use therapies with proven effectiveness – the sheer existence of 500 to 1000 current therapies and interventions precludes having high-quality research findings on each one. Some therapies may be ineffective or even iatrogenic and/or harmful; most are untested. Thus, Zalaquett advocates using the Psychotherapy Hype Checklist as a tool to evaluate the myriad exaggerated claims regarding psychotherapy interventions in the psychotherapy “marketplace”. Zalaquett comments on each of the 19 entries to the Checklist in the context of helping practitioners discern what works, and what is unlikely to.