TRAINING IN EMPIRICALLY VALIDATED TREATMENTS - WHAT ARE CLINICAL-PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS LEARNING

Directors of clinical training (83%) and directors of internships with American Psychological Association approval (55%) responded to a surv ey concerning empirically validated psychological treatments in which their students received training. Most programs provided supervised cl inical experience in a number of these treatments. However over 20% of doctoral training programs failed to provide minimal coverage of empi rically validated treatments in didactic courses, and internship progr ams typically did not require that students be competent in any of the se treatments before completion of the program. The absence of didacti c and clinical training in empirically validated psychodynamic therapi es and interpersonal therapy was most marked. These findings suggest t hat programs need to be more attentive to teaching data-based treatmen ts.