Les diffeŕrentes méthodes de psychothérapie sont-elles également efficaces quelles que soient les diffeŕrences entre les patients ?

Abstract

Psychotherapy researchers generally assume the main psychotherapeutic methods all are equally effective. They argue this finding supports the idea that the outcome is mainly attributable to factors common to all therapeutic approaches rather than to factors specific to each one. It is advocated in this paper that the conventional point of view may overlook the value of certain individual differences - like comorbidity, personality, and motivation or decisional balance - as indications for specific forms of therapy. Biases could conceal differences in outcome of therapies : As 'controlled' studies on psychotherapies scarcely control variables like personality or decisional balance, this may conceal the hypothesised fact that certain therapies systematically fail or succeed with patients presenting certain characteristics, like his/her personality structure or level of readiness for change. The issue of differential indication is still open, but it will progress only if outcome research will pay closer attention to patients' individual differences.