What to do when it is not so clear what to do: Or, what to do until the data arrive

摘要

Is there room to improve our current treatments for child and adolescent psychiatric disorders, even in the face of limited evidence? It is likely that there are tools currently available that may be helpful for individual patients while we await the arrival of new evidence-based therapies. And, what approaches might we study to improve treatment in the future? For the purposes of this discussion, we will use major depression in adolescents as an exemplar and explore possible pathways for improving treatment for our patients; however, it is our expectation that this model will apply to most other psychiatric disorders.