All you need is cognitive behaviour therapy?

doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7352.1522

BMJ 2002;324:1522 ( 22 June )

Letters

All you need is cognitive behaviour therapy?

Critical appraisal of evidence base must be understood and respected

Integrated biopsychosocial approach will be treatment of choice

Political range of psychotherapies has emerged

Summary of responses

Critical appraisal of evidence base must be understood and respected

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ The article by Holmes and the accompanying commentaries essentially aim to explore the evidence for the efficacy andeffectiveness of the psychotherapies and how this should be appliedin everyday clinical practice.¹ It is ironic that the argumentsagainst cognitive therapy include numerous instances of idiosyncraticuse of researchevidence.

Firstly, for example, in his commentary Bolsover selects three studies to support his view that the evidence base for cognitivetherapy is weak. We would challenge him to apply his argumentsto the seven systematic reviews of cognitive therapy in the CochraneDatabase and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness.²

Holmes and also Bolsover cite a single paper to suggest that cognitive therapy is less effective in the real world of clinicalpractice than in university based clinical trials. This caricaturemay have applied to some trials conducted 30 years ago but isirrelevant now. To give . . . [Full text of this article]

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All you need is cognitive behaviour therapy? • Commentary: Benevolent scepticism is just what the doctor ordered • Commentary: Yes, cognitive behaviour therapy may well be all you need • Commentary: Symptoms or relationships • Commentary: The "evidence" is weaker than claimed: Jeremy Holmes, Roger Neighbour, Nicholas Tarrier, R D Hinshelwood, and Nick Bolsover
BMJ 2002 324: 288-294. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]