There are days when it seems everyone is seeking some specialty training.  You, reader, could be one of those people.  After all, whether you are filling out credentialing and privileging forms for insurance companies, or, in North Carolina, the LME/MCOs that disburse the State’s monies, many of them ask you to specify what specialized training (in treatments and populations) you’ve gotten post-masters or post-doctoral degree.  I recently filled out an insurance company’s form myself and realized I could only click on a few check boxes out of seven pages of listings.  It was humbling.

You could be looking at Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT); Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT); Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT); Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming Therapy (EMDR); Motivational Interviewing (MI) and, continuing the acronym salad, CPT, REBT, RBT and so on.  And I am not listing the specific therapies for children and couples/families!  Do you too wonder how you’ll keep up?

Have you looked at how these therapies compare with each other?  What does the research literature show about the processes and outcomes?  Do you scratch your head about the clear differences between CPT and EMDR for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?  Or how about Alan Marlatt’s cognitive-behavioral therapy for substance abuse, Relapse Prevention, compared to Motivational Interviewing?  Do you wonder what they have in common – what active ingredient(s)?

A recent article by Laska & Wompold at http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/pst-a0038245.pdf is thought provoking.  Check it out, it’s a short read.