Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and treatment outcomes: Epistemological Assumptions and Controversies

摘要

Accessible summary Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is recommended as a primary treatment choice in England, for anxiety and depression, by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). It has been argued that CBT has enjoyed political and cultural dominance and this has arguably led to maintained government investment in England for the cognitive and behavioural treatment of mental health problems. The government programme Improving Access to Psychological Therapies' (IAPT) aims to improve the availability of CBT. The criticism of the NICE evidence-based guidelines supporting the IAPT programme, has been the dominance of the gold standard randomized controlled trial methodology, with a focus on numerical outcome data, rather than a focus on a recovery narrative. RCT-based research is influenced by a philosophical paradigm called positivism. The IAPT culture is arguably influenced by one research paradigm and such an influence can skew services only towards numerical outcome data as the only truth of recovery'. An interpretative paradigm could assist in shaping service-based cultures, alter how services are evaluated and improve the richness of CBT research. This paper explores the theory of knowledge (epistemology) that underpins the evidence-based perspective of CBT and how this influences service delivery. The paper argues that the inclusion of service user narrative (qualitative data) can assist the evaluation of CBT from the user's perspective and can understand the context in which people live and how they access services. A qualitative perspective is discussed as a research strategy, capturing the lived experience of under-represented groups, such as sexual, gender and ethnic minorities.