Do psychological interventions make a difference? Original Research Article

A major challenge for the science of clinical psychology is to convincingly demonstrate the effectiveness of our interventions. Competition from pharmacological companies and restrictions by health insurance organizations make this an important challenge. Factors external to psychology as well as those within our profession contribute to the lack of full acceptance of psychological interventions. We need to identify psychological variables that have powerful relationships with health characteristics as well as investing in treatment outcome studies. Professional psychology also needs to commit to disseminating information about empirically supported treatments.