Evidence based Medicine

Editorial

In my field of work, Clinical psychology, we used to work with risky hypotheses like those coming from psychoanalysis. Not so long ago, theories were drawn from the fertile imagination of individuals that suggested that unconscious factors were the driving force of all psychic life. The alternative came from behavioral scientists that worked mainly in the laboratory with rats in cages.

Luckily times have changed; we have adopted again the scientific method and try to test theories and hypothesis, with base on the reality of the evidence. We have acquired knowledge during decades concerning laws of learning, neural networks, social context and so on. That´s the way how a social study has become a science based on the evidence drawn from studies. Clinical trials and manuals describe how to measure the psychopathology, how to study the process of change and therapy, how to treat effectively mental disorders. So let´s move on and discover the advances gained by this branch of Editorial medicine, called clinical psychology.