[Are patients in randomised controlled trials of psychotherapy representative for clinical practice?]

In the debate about evidence-based psychotherapy it is often assumed that randomised controlled trials (RCT's) have a limited generalizable. Among the reasons for this assumption are the strict exclusion criteria which rule out patients with comorbidity or multiple diagnoses.

To investigate whether these strict exclusion criteria do effect the generalizable of RCT's.

Narrative overview of the research literature on psychotherapy.

We found that the exclusion criteria infact have less effect than expected on the generalizable.

Most patients from clinical practice can indeed be included in a RCT. Recent RCT's also include many patients with comorbidity.