In my prior blogpost, I reviewed exciting developments taking place throughout Canada regarding “feedback-informed treatment” (FIT).  For those following me on Twitter–and if you’re not, please do so by clicking on the link–you already know that last week I was in Tunbridge, England for a two day training sponsored by the Kent-Medway National Healthcare Trust on “Supershrinks: Learning from the Fields Most Effective Practitioners.”  Interest in outcomes is growing exponentially, becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

It was a real pleasure being asked to work with the dedicated–and I must say, long-suffering–physicians, psychologists, counselors, social workers, and nurses of the NHS Trust.  I say “long-suffering” because these healthcare professionals, like others around the globe, are laboring to provide effective services while contending with a back breaking amount of paperwork, oversight, mandated treatment protocols, and regulation.

Much of the mess that behavioral health practitioners find themselves in is due to the way “good practice” is and has been conceptualized.  Simply put, the field–it’s researchers, visionaries, policy makers and sadly, many clinicians–are still stuck in the penicillin era, promoting specific treatments for specific disorders.  The result has been a growing list of protocols, fidelity and adherence measures, and other documentation requirements.  As pointed Bohanske and Franzcak point out in their excellent chapter on transforming behavioral health in the latest edition of The Heart and Soul of Change: Delivering What Works in Therapy, “The forms needed to obtain a marriage certificate, buy a new home, lease an automobile, apply for a passport, open a bank account, and die of natural causes…altogether…weigh 1.4 ounces.  By contrast, the paperwork required for enrolling a single mother in counseling to talk about difficulties her child [is] experiencing [weigh] 1.25 pounds” (p. 300).

Something has to change, and that something is the incessant focus on controlling the process–or “how”– of treatment.  Instead, as the video interview below illustrates, emphasis can be placed on outcome.  Doing so will not only simplify oversight and regulation but, as an increasing number of studies show, result in improved “FIT” and effect of services offered.