Empirically supported psychosocial interventions for children: an overview

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Evidence-Based Practice
• Clinical Research

Background:

• Debate exists between clinical trials research and practice.
• Internal validity (interpretability) vs. external validity (generalizability) is a key tradeoff.
• Need for empirically supported psychosocial interventions for children.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce a special issue on identifying empirically supported psychosocial interventions for children.
• Outline the history, agenda, and methodology of a task force.
• Define and identify specific interventions for childhood disorders.

Main Methods:

• Task force methodology for defining and identifying interventions.
• Review of existing literature on psychosocial interventions for children.
• Analysis of the research-practice gap in child mental health.

Main Results:

• Identification of several well-established or probably efficacious interventions.
• Summary of the challenges in translating research to clinical practice.
• Highlighting the need for continued efforts to bridge the research-practice gap.

Conclusions:

• Progress made in identifying empirically supported interventions for children.
• Ongoing need for research to enhance the generalizability and applicability of findings.
• Emphasize the importance of task force efforts in advancing evidence-based child mental health care.