https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10497315231206754
Advocates of Research Supported Treatments have substantial influence and authority in federal agencies, university settings, and university-affiliated medical centers. We posit ARSTs have limited influence and authority with the public at large and with many providers, especially those in private practice settings. We see several figures (introduced below) who have limited influence and authority in federal agencies, university settings, and university-affiliated medical centers, while they have considerable influence and authority with the public and with many providers, especially ones in private practice.
In the personal experience of the two authors, BKS is the only book about trauma that is regularly brought up by conversations partners who are not researchers, that is, when talking with community-based therapists, students, faculty colleagues outside of mental health, and the general public. Also, in our experience, PTSD researchers in the ARST arena are largely unaware of this book. For example, the first author did not know of this book until he started engaging more consistently with conversation partners outside research contexts (and did not read it until recently). Moreover, his research mentors, highly productive scientists, reported being unaware of the book. The first author did an informal poll of about 20 PTSD researchers at different stages of their careers, and four reported having some sense of the book. All four were graduate students. In sum, it appears there is an enormous public discourse on trauma and PTSD, and PTSD researchers are mostly not participating in it, and are possibly not even aware the discourse is occurring.
we are avid users of the Oxford University Press (OUP) series Treatments that Work . But what is OUP’s marketing budget for this series? Our guess is that it is small relative to popular press publishing industry standards.
An individual researcher or ARST doing something different than the SOP appears likely to have little impact on non-ARSTs and is unlikely to be rewarded within ARST contexts. Thus, individual action appears unlikely. At the same time, collective ARST action to innovate outside of the SOP is not occurring at a large enough scale. This is due in part to the fact that researchers are typically focused on their individual research agenda as this is what they are rewarded for. Substantive collective action, for example, many or all PTSD researchers contributing to a single project, is hard to even imagine as it is so outside the SOP. Moreover, the SOP is likely easier in the short term than collective action among trauma ARSTs, given competitiveness among researchers, and the systemic problem that we are consistently haggling over pieces of a small pie of funding and resources.
this article is such an amazing microcosm slash playbook on how the public and science interface today and how they could interface.