EBT: What is Evidence-Based Therapy and Why Should You Care?

At Therapy Lab, we practice evidence-based, or science-based, mental health treatment. So what?

Have you ever had a close family member suffer with mental illness? Have you had bouts with depression or anxiety, or has your partner or your best friend? If you had to recommend a therapist, would you care to know if the therapist’s approach is likely to work?

We surely would!  And, surprisingly, up until the past decade, finding a therapist has been so bewildering, with no good way to answer this question. It’s important to find a therapist who’s more than a warm and supportive confidante.  Luckily, therapists who use science as a foundation of their practice are now more outspoken about their allegiance to evidence. And Therapy Lab is proud to be a loud science-based team of providers.  

Science—neuropsychological research, clinical intervention studies, community studies and the like--gives us a guide for therapy, a guide that shows us a way to work effectively with clients. Being science-minded in our approach also means that we measure our work based on clients’ progress and response to what we do.

Let’s illustrate some examples of how an evidence-based treatment plan might begin:

Feeling blue?

With sadness and depression, we immediately look at changing one tiny daily behavior (e.g., showering, listen to your favorite song) and establish a daily routine for doing this one thing daily until the next session. Behavioral activation, which works so reliably, indicates that activation is more urgent than long, exploratory discussions of relationships or parsing a lengthy narrative. Those avenues can certainly be explored once the client is aroused from the depressed state, but first we rouse. And it works simply, reliably in this order.

Can’t Sleep?

With insomnia, we have her monitor her sleep routine each day, and we teach sleep hygiene. We problem-solve with a focus on consistent wake time (since science tells us that we can worry less about going-to-sleep time, which more naturally falls into place). We model paradoxical thinking that sparks the possibility of enjoying those early morning hours rather than feeding that anxiety about lost sleep. And before long (usually only 6 sessions or so), the client is sleeping through the night thanks to CBT-Insomnia.

Parent Woes?

For a parent struggling with their child’s behavioral problems, we start by asking the parent to commit to 5 minutes of “special time” each day with the child. We don’t suggest two hours, as evidence tells us that five minutes is sufficient and that going beyond is not sustainable and self-defeating. Parent Child Interaction Therapy is one of the most well-researched, evidence-based approaches to supporting your child’s development, and it starts with five minutes.

What Do You Mean By Evidence?

The “evidence” that supports techniques like these includes the results and data and outcomes from a multitude of research studies (like, we’re talking dozens, if not hundreds).  Technically, someone could use the term “evidence-based” to reference the results of one single study, but at Therapy Lab, we’re using this term to mean that our psychotherapy approach (i.e., Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) has been researched and supported through the highest quality and best conducted studies (i.e., meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials).

Results have been repeated time and again by different researchers, and effectiveness has been seen across of variety of people (age, race, creed).  In these kinds of studies, scientists consider factors that might otherwise explain the results, such as the participants’ expectations and placebo effects. They test CBT against other well-established treatments (medication, supportive counseling) to make sure it performs as well, if not better than, the others.  

The team at Therapy Lab feels enormously grateful to the researchers who create the evidence that guides our practices with clients. We feel such satisfaction knowing that we can not only establish a warm, safe therapeutic relationship with our clients but also impart science-based techniques to create lifelong change. To explore the plans that we offer that are rooted in science and blossoming in our practice, check out our Plans page.