Promoting a Practitioner-Based Agenda in the Development, Dissemination, and Implementation of Empirically Supported Treatments

In an effort to integrate scientific inquiry and clinical practice, Division 12 (Clinical Psychology) of the American Psychological Association has compiled and disseminated a list of Empirically Supported Treatments (ESTs). These are evidence-based interventions for diverse psychosocial problems that have been subjected to rigorous scientific trials and have been found to be efficacious for specific target populations. However, universal acceptance of the EST movement has not occurred. This paper will enumerate three barriers to the successful development, dissemination, and implementation of ESTs that practitioners cannot change and three barriers to each that practitioners can change. We suggest that successful EST implementation may best be facilitated through a thoughtful consideration of the limits of development and dissemination and by an active promotion of a practitioner-based agenda. The lack of a concerted effort on behalf of practicing clinicians to more fully participate in the EST movement lies at the core of the problem and the beginning of its solution.