Who Needs a Case Formulation and Why: Clinicians Use the Case Formulation to Guide Decision-Making

Authors

  • Jacqueline B. Persons

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14713/pcsp.v9i4.1835

Keywords:

idiographic case formulation, treatment developers, treatment utility, clinical decision-making, randomized trial, empirically supported treatments, clinical case studies, case studies

Abstract

Protocols for empirically-supported treatments (ESTs) typically do not require the therapist to develop an individualized formulation of the patient, nor do they describe procedures for doing this. I offer some hypotheses about why the idiographic case formulation receives short shrift in most EST protocols, I describe an exception to this general rule, and I conclude with a discussion of implications of these ideas for psychotherapy research.

Author Biography

Jacqueline B. Persons

Jan Fishman, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief, Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy Professor of Clinical and Organizational Psychology Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology Rutgers University Mailing address: 57 Jaffray Court Irvington, NY 10533 914-693-8549 fax: 603-917-2567 email: dfish96198@aol.com

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Published

2013-12-12

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 4 (2013)

Section

Focusing on One Dimension of Case Study Method: Individualized Case Formulation

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