Randomized placebo-controlled trials are recognized as the gold-standard of evidence-based medicine but when it comes to psychotherapy research all that g
litters is not gold. Translation of this standard from medicine to clinical psychology is fraught with difficulties. While a wealth of robust evidence shows that psychotherapy is effective for a range of mental health conditions the use of placebo controls to assess the effectiveness of specific psychological interventions faces serious conceptual and methodological challenges (Gaab et al., 2018).
References: