Evidence-Based Practice in “the Real World”

Abstract

The term evidence-based practice (EBP) has developed into a mantra not just within the medical area of treatment, but within the psychosocial realm of treatment as well. Today, decision-makers and funding authorities are increasingly demanding that psychosocial treatment should be evidence-based and that the different types of treatment facilities should attempt to adapt to this, inter alia by providing offers that are reputed to be evidence-based. In this article, EBP is viewed under a slightly different perspective than the one usually used when discussing it. It is claimed that evidence-based counselling and therapeutic methods only account for a small part of the strategies that are relevant for treating clients with substance and/or alcohol misuse. In the first part of the article, EBP is defined and placed in relation to evidence-based counselling/therapy (EBC/T). In the article's second part, the relevance of – not least – EBC/T in the “real world” is discussed. The real world is defined as, among other things, “what clients receive, not what they are offered” and “what clients need, not what the system needs”. This is illustrated by discussing two Danish research projects that demonstrate, inter alia, that what is received does not have much in common with what is offered.