دانلود رایگان مقاله صحت پژوهش های درمانی مبتنی بر آزمایشگاه

Abstract

A major objective of experimental psychopathology research is to improve clinical practice via the experimental study of treatment mechanisms. The success of this endeavor depends on the external validity of the procedures used to model the treatment component in the laboratory. We propose a general framework and a set of specific criteria that will allow evaluating whether a certain laboratory procedure is a valid model for a certain clinical treatment. We illustrate this framework by evaluating the validity of extinction as a laboratory model for clinical exposure therapy. Although we acknowledge the merits of the extinction model, we argue that its validity might not be as firmly established as the research community assumes. We also use extinction as an example to demonstrate how considerations of the proposed criteria can stimulate further improvements to existing models of treatment. We conclude that the systematic assessment of external validity of treatment models is an important step towards bridging the gap between science and practice in the field of experimental psychopathology.

4. Conclusion and discussion

The issue of external validity has received ample interest in pharmacological research and some interest in EP research concerned with the modeling of psychopathology (e.g., Abramson & Seligman, 1977; Vervliet & Raes, 2013). The external validity of models of psychological treatment, although no less important, has received less attention. Threatened external validity of treatment models, amongst other factors, can explain why promising findings of experimental research do not generalize to clinical treatment. This has led some clinically-oriented researchers to argue in favor of testing interventions directly in clinical research and skip experimental approaches (Sloan, 2014). However, EP treatment research can make a unique contribution to the advancement of (transdiagnostic) treatment next to clinical studies by offering a profound understanding of treatment mechanisms. To maximize the translational value of EP research, it is, however, important that treatment models are subjected to systematic evaluation with regard to their external validity. In the present paper, we propose a framework for such evaluation. In particular, we demonstrate how the validity criteria previously outlined in pharmacological research (i.e., face validity, construct validity and predictive validity) can be applied to models of psychological treatment. Using extinction as a model for exposure-based therapy, we illustrate how this framework is not only suitable to evaluate treatment models, but can also stimulate future research to optimize models for psychological treatment.