Over 50 years ago Paul (1967) asked the fundamental question for psychotherapy “What treatment, by whom, is most effective for this in- dividual with that specific problem, under which set of circumstances” (Paul, 1967, p .111). The proud boast of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service is of a million referrals a year, with test results for 90% of treatment sessions [IAPT Manual 2019]. But despite the quantity of data IAPT has amassed over the last 14 years, it has been of no help to clinicians in answering this key question. It has simply been an added stress.
What is the function of the IAPT data? Is it to simply bamboozle paymasters NHS England/Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)? Perhaps it is to improve the practice of IAPT staff? Even if this latter were the case, there is no evidence that this translates into an improved outcome for clients that they would recognise.
The irrelevance of the IAPT data set, can be gauged by inspecting the table below:
|
Treatment |
Clinician |
Characteristics of the client |
Specificity of the Problem |
Specificity of Psychosocial Functioning |
|
There is no treatment typology within the service. Simply a claim that most clients get CBT in varying doses. |
The service distinguishes deliverers of low and high intensity. But clinicians training varies enormously from clinical psychologists with Ph.Ds to recent graduates who have done voluntary work. |
Clients are not distinguished in terms of whether they may or not have a personality disorder or a neuro developmental problem. |
The service has no typology of problems. It does not make diagnoses so cannot specify disorders, albeit that it allocates a diagnostic codes. |
There is no framework within which to specify level of functioning |
With IAPT’s data there are fuzzies in every column of Paul’s framework, leaving its’ clinicians rudderless.
Dr Mike Scott
Paul, G. L. (1967). Outcome research in psychotherapy. Journal
of Consulting Psychology, 31, 109–118.