Research Resources

Psychoanalytic Research Society  The purpose of the Society is to promote psychoanalytic research of an empirical, theoretical and clinical nature. The Society is involved in a variety of research activities including the planning and conducting of psychoanalytic research, as well as the dissemination of research findings. Information, Bulletin and Links.

CAMHS Outcome Research Consortium  The CAMHS Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC) is a collaboration between a number of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the UK with the aim of developing and piloting a model of routine evaluation of outcome that can provide high quality, information on the outcomes of therapeutic services for children, young people and their families, that can be of use to service providers, commissioners and users. As of July 2004 CORC has 39 members from across the UK.

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.

Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies “Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry”, wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, in March 2004. In the same year, Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, lambasted the industry for becoming “primarily a marketing machine” and co-opting “every institution that might stand in its way”. Medical journals were conspicuously absent from her list of co-opted institutions, but she and Horton are not the only editors who have become increasingly queasy about the power and influence of the industry. Jerry Kassirer, another former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, argues that the industry has deflected the moral compasses of many physicians [3], and the editors of PLoS Medicine have declared that they will not become “part of the cycle of dependency…between journals and the pharmaceutical industry”. Something is clearly up.

Commercial influence and the content of medical journals Authors of articles in medical journals may be affected by commercial bias. Whether this same concern applies to the editors and owners of journals has rarely been critically examined.1 2 Our article explores the reasons for concern. We use information in the literature on three important questions. Do financial conflicts of interest affect decisions made by journal editors? Do journals have policies on authors' conflicts of interest, and how well do editors enforce those policies? Do financial considerations affect the content of medical journals? We end with a proposal for future research that would help to advance this debate.

Psychoanalytic Research Overview  It is clearly of central importance to psychoanalysis as a professional activity to sustain a vigourous program of empirical research. We need to learn more about (1) what changes actually take place in psychoanalytic therapy (the outcome question) and (2) how those changes come about, through the interactions of what factors in the patient, the therapist, the therapy, and the evolving life situation (the process question). I divide the history of psychoanalytic therapy research into four successive generations, each marked by increasing conceptual sophistication and methodological advance. Information and references.

Grasping the Nettle: or Why Psychoanalytic Research is such an Irritant  Paper by Peter Fonagy. Most of us would give nettles a wide berth and the same strategy has been widely adopted in relation to psychoanalytic research. My aim here will be not only to ask you to abandon this strategy, but more ambitiously to persuade you to embrace, or at least firmly grasp, this unattractive specimen of flora and enthusiastically go forth in the pursuit of psychoanalytic knowledge through research.

Lester Luborsky's Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT)  This guide will help those who are interested in the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method to see in sharper perspective the large and rapidly growing field of findings that began with the CCRT method by Luborsky (1976,1977), and was furthered by the Ulm CCRT celebration. It concludes with a re-evaluation of the broad issue of the closeness of the CCRT measure to Freud's concept of the transference template.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Research at the University of Zurich  the department’s research has placed emphasis on content analytical and qualitative investigations of patient narratives. These narratives are obtained through the department’s own psychotherapy department practice and examined using the JAKOB narrative analysis developed specifically for this purpose. For the data collection a high quality video system is available.

Laboratory of Personality and Psychopathology  The Laboratory of Personality and Psychopathology at Emory University is devoted to exploring links between personality, psychological disorders, and treatment. The research ranges from basic science research on the etiology and classification of psychopathology to implications of personality processes for treatment.

Society For Psychotherapy Research  The Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) is an international, interdisciplinary organisation dedicated to the scientific study of psychotherapy in all of its various forms. Newsletter, past conference Scientific Programs, old newsletters and records of important decisions are kept here.

Journal For Psychotherapy Research and Practice  Full text and abstracts.

Psychotherapy Research as Social Discourse  The authors´ arguments for psychotherapy research as social discourse shall not be seen as a general rejection of quantitative research, but both should be considered principally equal. In this sense the authors hope to stimulate a discussion on the question which of the two was more suitable to specific questions of research.

Emotion Home Page  Conferences, Journals, Perspectives, research, resources.

Research Resources for the Social Sciences  Comprehensive site providing access to many useful research resources.

The Campbell Collaboration  What helps? What harms? Based on what evidence?

Evidence Based Mental Health  Research resources: evidence-based information about mental health or general health issues.

Finding the Evidence  A gateway to the literature in child and adolescent mental health. Finding the Evidence is a unique type of publication, with three main aims: first, to identify the best available scientific evidence, second, to promote critical appraisal, and finally, to be scrupulously up to date. In essence, Finding the Evidence aims to promote evidence-based practice by providing the best available evidence where possible on the topics covered.

Evidence Based Practice and Intuition  It is high time to call a halt to the false dichotomy between clinical intuition and the demands of an evidence based approach, by raising the status of intuition as a component of expert decision making.

“The first thing to realise about quality assurance is that it has absolutely nothing to do with quality, but it has everything to do with management. And on the basis that those who do, can, and those who cannot, manage, it would be unwise to expect anything of practical use coming out of quality assurance - except, of course, things of practical use to the managers of which the first is more importance and status for them, the second a device for controlling subordinates and the third a tool with which to reassure a gullible public..............we should remember that the things that really count, in education or medicine or most other fields, things like integrity, honesty, wisdom, inspiration, real knowledge and practical intelligence, are not measurable or specifiable as “targets”: so targets are invented and massaged, as in the manipulation of health service waiting times, and in ways which have little to do with real quality.....................But what quality assurance does do is to institute huge bureaucracies inside and outside the institutions whose quality is being assured, with all the waste, replication and sheer redundant paperwork these things spawn, to say nothing of obsession with irrelevant and counter-productive targets............Even worse, quality assurance also protects stupidity and mediocrity by enabling the stupid and mediocre to defend themselves against any criticism or liability by claiming, in all probability correctly, that “procedures” have been followed and “policies” implemented, never mind that the procedures and policies are to a large extent pointless or worse. And worse even than that, but as the result of all its cumulative effect, quality assurance drives out real talent and real judgement by insisting that long experience and practical wisdom are not only not enough but have to have the life squeezed out of them by being fitted onto a Procrustian bed of “aims”, “objectives”, “skills” and “intended outcomes””. Anthony O’Hear. Plato’s Children: The State We Are In.

Ethical Issues in Evidence Based Medicine  In our project Ethical Issues of Evidence-based Practice in Medicine and Health Care (EviBase) which was sponsored by the European Commission within the Fifth Framework Program, we have tried to uncover and analyse the hidden values that are guiding the process of rationalisation of medical care and health policy on the basis of scientific evidence. In a number of workshops, organised by the core-group, researchers, philosophers, policy-makers and clinicians discussed the ethical issues of EBM in various disciplines and contexts like medical research, health economy, hospital care, policy-making, medical education and so on. In my presentation, I will give a short overview of the ethical issues that the project participants thought to be relevant and to be discussed in a wider audience.

Ethical issues of cost effectiveness analysis and guideline setting in mental health care Cost effectiveness studies and guidelines based on such studies are often seen as impartial, neutral instruments which try to reduce the influence of non-scientific factors. However, such rationalising instruments often hide normative assumptions about the goals of treatment, the selection of treatments, the role of the patient, and the just distribution of scarce resources. These issues are dealt with in the context of increased control over clinical practice by third parties.

Ethics and evidence based medicine We review ethical concerns associated with evidence based medicine, in particular that it invites a simplistic approach to the role of evidence in medicine, which can be misinterpreted and may not allow for the complexity of clinical decision making. Points: evidence based medicine is unable to resolve competing claims of different interest groups; collecting sufficient satisfactory evidence raises problems because randomised controlled trials are only possible where there is genuine “therapeutic equipoise”; crude application of results of clinical trials to individual care may disadvantage some patients; and allocating resources on the basis of evidence involves implicit value judgements and could imply that lack of evidence means lack of value.

Validity of Evidence Based Practice This paper examines underlying presuppositions and assumptions entailed in evidence-based practice. It shows that evidence-based practice is based on a particularly deterministic version of rationality which is unsatisfactory. It traps clinicians within a mechanistic form of technical rationality within which only certain forms of action are considered legitimate. This feeds into the rhetoric of new managerialist strategies aimed at increasingly regulating and controlling practitioners.

Empirically Supported Psychological Interventions: Controversies and Evidence The work of several task forces and other groups reviewing empirically supported treatments (ESTs) in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere is summarised here, along with the lists of treatments that have been identified as ESTs. Also reviewed is the controversy surrounding EST identification and dissemination, including concerns about research methodology, external validity, and utility of EST research, as well as the reliability and transparency of the EST review process.