Relationships that heal.

This presentation, the 2010 NIDA Blending Conference’s Eileen Pencer Memorial Lecture, focuses on the reality that multisite clinical trials, like the CTN, often find very small differences between treatment-as-usual and evidence-based interventions. This happens even with pharmacotherapies, in part because, in practice, evidence-based treatments are not homogenous entities. Even though statistically small effects may be clinically meaningful, it is often the case that clinicians are more interested in learning a new treatment method when there is greater clinically significant improvement between their old methods and the new one. Therapist belief and experience matters when it comes to the adoption of new interventions in practice, especially when treatment as usual seems to be working “pretty good.”

One proposed solution to this issue is to focus on hiring more empathic therapists, as it is an evidence-based practice to hire staff based on, and to train staff in, the skill of accurate empathy. Regardless, it makes sense to focus on training the next generation of addiction professionals in evidence-based treatments from the very beginning, to help prevent many of the common clinical roadblocks to adoption.