Lecture 9: Treatment Planning

Child Therapies
Treatment Planning

Given all of the options of treatment

How do we decide the best plan for each client?

Clinical Judgment

Practitioner Experience: of self and colleagues

Theoretical considerations

What is the best approach according to the therapists

theoretical orientation?

Outcome Research

Randomized Clinical Trial

Applies scientific method

Usually adhere to treatment manual

Specific participant characteristics and treatment settings

Experiment and control group

High internal validity and reliability

External validity?

efficacy research: Maximum internal validity with strict control over

participants, implementation of treatment, and the setting

Effectiveness research: evaluate treatment with real world

conditions; done after efficacy research.

What does the research indicate?

Empirically Supported Treatments

Well-Established: high level of research support

Probably efficacious: significant degree of research support

In general, manualized therapy with controlled conditions help clients,

but
few community studies have demonstrated effectiveness for child therapy

Research Findings

Largest quantity of support for CBT in general

Little support for constructivist therapy

Externalizing behaviors

Support for structured forms of family systems therapy with

components of CBT

Psychodynamic therapy is NOT the treatment of choice

Internalizing behaviors

For children younger than 9, psychodynamic/play therapy may

be more useful than CBT

Clinical Judgment or Outcome Research?

Clinical Judgment

Provides a flexible, responsive basis for planning

Specific information about responses of individuals

Outcome Research

Provides reliable information

General knowledge about group responses to interventions

Clinicians should combine these two forms of knowledge

Use research findings as anchors that establish basic principles

of intervention

Use clinical judgment to customize interventions for individual

clients