We’ve been regularly updating you on the publication of the NICE draft guidelines and our response. Following this, we’ve undertaken some research looking at how counselling and the treatment of depression should be evaluated.
The research explored the meaning of ‘best’ evidence and ‘best’ guidelines methodologies as we’ve long argued that NICE should look to combine different types of evidence to complement that from the trials. This includes practice based evidence (such as data from IAPT) and qualitative data from service users.
We were reassured to find that with regards to depression, counselling is an effective treatment. We found no significant difference between the types of therapy being used and this supports a refocus on our research efforts from looking at treatment difference to other factors such as therapist effects.
You can read the full research paper now on the CPR website.