Evidence-based treatments for children and adolescents with phobic and anxiety disorders: issues and commentary

The movement to develop evidence-based assessment and treatment is of relatively recent origin; nonetheless, it has quickly revolutionized the field of mental health. This development has however been highly controversial and has served to divide the mental health professions. Three major issues associated with evidence-based treatment are examined: (a) some treatments have been shown to be more effective than others and, as a result, the “Dodo Bird” effect (i.e., all treatments are equivalent) is no longer tenable, (b) use of treatment manuals might lead to mechanical, inflexible interventions that result in loss of creativity and innovation in the therapy enterprise, and (c) treatments shown to be effective in clinical research settings might not be applicable or transport to “real-life” clinical practice settings. These issues are addressed and areas of rapprochement are explored. These are exciting times for the field of child and adolescent psychotherapy, and the various articles in this special issue attest to what we know and what we have yet to learn in treating anxiety disorders in youth.