“Evidence-based therapy” has become a marketing buzzword. The term “evidence based” comes from medicine. It gained attention in the 1990s and was initially a call for critical thinking. Proponents of evidence-based medicine recognized that “We’ve always done it this way” is poor justification for medical decisions. Medical decisions
should integrate individual clinical expertise, patients’ values and preferences, and relevant scientific research.But the term evidence based has come to mean something very different for psychotherapy. It has been appropriated to promote a specific ideology and agenda. It is now used as a code word for manualized therapy—most often brief, one-sizefits-all forms of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). “Manualized” means the therapy
is conducted by following an instruction manual.