Stressing the (Other) Three Rs in the Search for Empirically Supported Treatments: Review Procedures, Research Quality, Relevance to Practice and the Public Interest

The Society of Clinical Psychology's task forces on psychological intervention developed criteria for evaluating clinical trials, applied those criteria, and generated lists of empirically supported treatments. Building on this strong base, the task force successor, the Committee on Science and Practice, now pursues a three-part agenda: (a) evolution of review and classification procedures with an emphasis on reliability across reviewers, (b) an active role as gadfly in promoting improved research, and (c) a dissemination program (with an evolving web site) to make our process, findings, and data base accessible to practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and the public. We seek to link practitioners and researchers in the shared goal of improving mental health care by encouraging evidence-based practice and training.