What is Evidence-Based Treatment in Mental Health?

Interventions are discussed from a multidimensional perspective, encompassing pharmacological treatments, psychotherapy, digital mental health tools, and community-based programs. By grounding our practices in solid scientific evidence, we can offer more effective, efficient, and ethical care to those struggling with mental health issues. At its core, evidence-based mental health is a approach that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient values to guide decision-making in mental health care. This Clinical Support System for Serious Mental Illness (CSS-SMI), also known as SMI Adviser (), began in July 2018 with the mission of advancing the use of evidence-based practices and a person-centered approach to care for people who have serious mental illness. Despite the effectiveness of these strategies, most people with serious mental illnesses who need these evidence-based practices do not receive them.

Mental Health Therapy That Actually Works: Evidence-Based Treatments Explained

• EBTs often work quickly and effectively, sometimes within a few weeks or months, depending on the nature or severity of your symptoms.
• Psychiatric care involves diagnosis, medication management, and ongoing evaluation, complementing therapies like CBT and DBT.
• Serious mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and recurrent major depression, are debilitating and costly mental disorders that present significant challenges to patients and their families as well as to the health care organizations responsible for the care of these patients (1).

By working with a skilled therapist with expertise in evidence-based approaches, you can trust that your treatment plan is in capable hands. By understanding how these elements contribute to EBT, such as psychodynamic psychotherapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), you can make informed decisions about your mental health care and feel confident in your therapist’s approach. This commitment to safety and ethics ensures that patients receive care that is both effective and aligned with the highest standards of clinical psychology. EBT refers to a treatment approach grounded in scientific research and proven effective through rigorous studies. Evidence-based therapy refers to rigorously tested and proven effective therapeutic approaches through scientific research, such as psychodynamic psychotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. When seeking help from a therapist, you may come across the term “evidence-based therapy,” but what does it mean for you as a client or patient?

Evidence-based medicine works mainly through clinical trials, more specifically randomised control trials. EBM arose out of a desire to develop a systematic way of understanding which treatments work and when to use them. The term “evidence-based” comes from the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement, which started in the 1960s in both the US and the UK (though, as with most things in history, it has much earlier roots).

On the other hand, other psychosocial interventions are diffused and widely applied, although not yet evidence-based. Table AAFP Mental Health Month Resources 1 summarizes the current evidence-based psychiatric rehabilitation interventions and their potential benefits in SMI (11, 12, 17–25). Moreover, too often psychosocial rehabilitation has been considered a therapeutic practice of “common sense,” which could be carried out by any mental health professional, even without specific training.

Mental Health and Mental Disorders

The risk is also higher for other disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. For example, variations in the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) are linked to depression and anxiety disorders. The paraventricular nucleus (PVN) plays a key role in controlling the HPA axis, which is involved in stress responses and is linked to mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Understanding and targeting glutamate pathways is critical for advancing mental health treatments and promoting cognitive well-being . Medications such as serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) target norepinephrine pathways to treat depression and anxiety disorders.

Focus on Preventive Care

Many clinicians hold a misperceived idea that the psychotherapy provided could never meet EBP criteria or standards, because data are insufficient or flawed. Other components, such as database and journal access, in addition to training, can be costly and challenging to locate for more remote clinicians. Such over-reliance on rules may result in psychotherapeutic practice that is management driven, rather than patient-centered . This is challenging in that there are often lags between conduction of research and publication, and then from publication to adoption into practice or policy. Second, there are a number of marked differences between the processes of commonly practiced psychotherapies and EBP. Ultimately, the goal of EBP is the promotion and implementation of psychotherapies that are safe, consistent, and cost-effective .

While this method of conducting research excels at producing favorable outcomes, it does little in the way of creating a context that mirrors the clinical realities we most often deal with in our day-to-day practice. In light of these trends, there is a clear disconnect between the effects observed in the clinical laboratory and the real-world impact that these practices and procedures are having on the lived experiences of treatment-seeking individuals in the general population. This should involve careful planning of implementation and prolonged monitoring of both implementation and outcomes, while considering the interplay between intervention structure, clinical setting, and clients’ and practitioners’ characteristics. This case series illustrated the complexity of knowledge creation and clinical action processes oriented toward the achievement of optimal clinical outcomes in occupation-oriented interventions, emphasizing the importance and mutual contribution of both processes. The systematic documentation of the practice, with reflection on arising issues, will contribute to the researcher–clinician knowledge exchange and further the building of evidence in a supportive way for clinical practice.