‘Are You Back To Your Usual Self?’

at a workshop I gave in Liverpool last Friday, there was much interest in this metric for evaluating the effectiveness of a psychological service. The workshop was titled ‘Group CBT…Yes…But’ (and was also the innaugral meeting of the BABCP Group CBT Special Interest Group), and I reflected that none of the studies of classes, such as ‘Stress Control’ or the ‘Five Areas Approach’ had independent assessors asking people whether as a result of the intervention they were back to their old self, much less whether they remained as their old self for say at least 8 weeks. Yet they are promoted as the first line of treatment in services such as IAPT. Further were groups (as opposed to classes) are run they are often for targets such as ‘low self-esteem’ or ‘destabilisation groups’ with for which there is no evidence at all of real world outcomes. I think a key feature of the workshop for many people was making a sharp distinction between the evidence base for classes as opposed to groups, for depression and the anxiety disorders. The powerpoint presentation for the workshop can be accessed below:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikei2478wvnwu15/Group%20CBT%20SIg%20Feb%2022nd%202019.pptx?dl=0

I also suggested that the case for transdiagnostic approaches is, at the very least, not proven. Nevertheless I fear managers will attempt to play a numbers game with regards to groups blurring the distinction between them and classes. With, as suggested in a role play we did, a therapist trying to sell a ‘stress class’ to a client over the telephone, the latter could have had depression, PTSD, body dysmorphic disorder (or some combination there of) or even an adjustment disorder. The therapist herself with insufficient time to make a formulation becoming a candidate for a stress class in her own right!

Dr Mike Scott