Examples

Registries / Lists of EBTs

There are a number of lists of evidence-based practices in fields related to children's mental health. This is not an exhaustive list of EBT registries; it also does not include sources of practice parameters or best practices such as those published by American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (www.aacap.org).

SAMHSA – The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services maintains a National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). SAMHSA lists model programs in three categories, representing increasing levels of empirical support:

• Promising Programs
• Effective Programs
• Model Programs

“By early 2007, SAMHSA anticipates the launching of a new NREPP Web site at www.nrepp.samhsa.gov.“

National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors – this group’s Research Institute offers a Matrix of Children’s Evidence Based Interventions.

Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (APA Division 53), Committee on Evidence-Based Practice has a website on evidence-based treatments for childhood anxiety and depression, conduct disorder and ADHD, describing disorders and treatments.

Blueprints for Violence Prevention – This program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, funded by Office for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, lists “Model Programs” and “Promising Programs”. Includes prevention as well as intervention programs.

The Hawaii Department of Health, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division, Evidence-Based Services Committee publishes a forty-six page Summary of Effective Interventions for Youth with Behavioral and Emotional Needs in 2000, revised in 2004. This is interesting as an example of a state initiative to advance the use of EBTs. It appears that Hawaii has not tried to limit reimbursement to a list of “approved” treatments.

Oregon, by contrast, has adopted a statutory mandate “to spend increasing shares of public dollars on evidence-based services, culminating in 75 percent by the 2009-11 budget period”. The List of OMHAS Approved Evidence-based Practices includes a description of all the approved practices, including prevention and intervention for children and adults, for substance abuse and mental health disorders, in just 14 pages. This simplistic approach to technology transfer raises a host of potential problems and seems an unlikely route to improved practice.

Specific EBTs

The literature now offers many, many EBTs. These are just a few examples of child/adolescent EBTs which we are most familiar. They are not intended to represent “the best”.

For more, see the registries above, or consult the rapidly growing literature of books and journal articles on EBTs for children, adolescents and families.

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT) TF-CBT is one of several EBTs designed to help child/adolescent trauma survivors. One notable feature is a web-based training that gives interested clinicians an overview of the treatment principles, as illustrated in video clips. (You can get 10 hours of continuing education credit by taking the web course – free!)

Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) BSFT is a form of family therapy designed for use with families of acting-out teens, and was devised specifically for use with Latino families in Miami. Subsequent research shows it is effective with families of varied ethnic background. BSFT is of interest to those in public clinics because it emphasizes methods of engaging families that most clinicians consider “hard to engage”.

MultiSystemic Therapy (MST) MST is undoubtedly the most-researched single EBT for adolescents, including research across multiple sites, with variations designed for special populations, and with extensive attention to the measurement of fidelity and outcomes. MST is also notable in focusing on what most clinicians consider a “difficult” population: seriously acting-out adolescents and their families. MST also has a very well developed, for-profit training and supervision arm.