Teaching Evidence-Based Practice in Mental Health

This article is reprinted from the journal Evidence-Based Mental Health. It presents the core virtues of the evidence-based paradigm (questioning of unfounded beliefs, rigorous scrutiny of methodology, critical appraisal of proposed treatments), and the authors’ experiences in teaching evidence-based practice to psychiatric residents. The aim of such training is to produce informed consumers of evidence, not researchers or methodologists. The lessons learned in psychiatric training have obvious applications to social work education.