On the significance of outcome studies: clinical relevance and research implications

Abstract

The paper draws attention to an emergent pantheoretical model in child and adolescent mental health intervention, which gets its inspiration from a combination of biological, systems, cognitive-behavioural and psychodynamic perspectives, and which is at least for the moment, mostly implicit, to be inferred from attitudes rather than explicitly declared. It is most evident in the how of interventions rather than the what. A characterisation of this implicit systemic model is offered, and its manifestations on treatment approaches taken as a whole are described.