ABSTRACT
There is a growing expectation in the public sector that the troubling and puzzling predicaments that present to policymakers, managers, and practitioners in mental health and social care should be understood through the application of knowledge derived from empirical research—on the model of the biomedical sciences—and that these predicaments should be responded to through interventions whose value and credibility has been assured through systematic evaluation. Commissioners of services rely increasingly on the evidence for the broad effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness, of psychotherapeutic interventions as treatments for specific problems (while trusting the pronouncements of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on the relative worth/significance of different forms of evidence).
