The future of psychological treatments: The Marburg Declaration

Winfried Rief; Gordon J G Asmundson; Richard A Bryant; David M Clark; Anke Ehlers; Emily A Holmes; Richard J McNally; Carmem B Neufeld; Sabine Wilhelm; Adam C Jaroszewski; Max Berg; Anke Haberkamp; Stefan G Hofmann; PsyChange consortium

doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102417

The future of psychological treatments: The Marburg Declaration

Clin Psychol Rev. 2024 Jun:110:102417. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102417. Epub 2024 Mar 25.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Philipps-University of Marburg, Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Group, Marburg, Germany. Electronic address: rief@uni-marburg.de.
² University of Regina, Department of Psychology, Regina, Canada.
³ University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁴ University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, UK.
⁵ Uppsala University, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala, Sweden; Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Solna, Sweden.
⁶ Harvard University, Department of Psychology, Cambridge, USA.
⁷ University of São Paulo, Department of Psychology, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil.
⁸ Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard School of Medicine, Boston, USA.
⁹ Philipps-University of Marburg, Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Group, Marburg, Germany.
¹⁰ Philipps-University of Marburg, Department of Psychology, Translational Clinical Psychology Group, Marburg, Germany.

PMID: 38688158
DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102417

Abstract

Although psychological treatments are broadly recognized as evidence-based interventions for various mental disorders, challenges remain. For example, a substantial proportion of patients receiving such treatments do not fully recover, and many obstacles hinder the dissemination, implementation, and training of psychological treatments. These problems require those in our field to rethink some of our basic models of mental disorders and their treatments, and question how research and practice in clinical psychology should progress. To answer these questions, a group of experts of clinical psychology convened at a Think-Tank in Marburg, Germany, in August 2022 to review the evidence and analyze barriers for current and future developments. After this event, an overview of the current state-of-the-art was drafted and suggestions for improvements and specific recommendations for research and practice were integrated. Recommendations arising from our meeting cover further improving psychological interventions through translational approaches, improving clinical research methodology, bridging the gap between more nomothetic (group-oriented) studies and idiographic (person-centered) decisions, using network approaches in addition to selecting single mechanisms to embrace the complexity of clinical reality, making use of scalable digital options for assessments and interventions, improving the training and education of future psychotherapists, and accepting the societal responsibilities that clinical psychology has in improving national and global health care. The objective of the Marburg Declaration is to stimulate a significant change regarding our understanding of mental disorders and their treatments, with the aim to trigger a new era of evidence-based psychological interventions.

Keywords: Culture sensitive treatments; Digital mental health; Dissemination; Meta-analysis; Network models; Psychological treatments; Psychotherapy; Translational psychology; Trial design.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Humans
Mental Disorders* / therapy
Psychology, Clinical / trends
Psychosocial Intervention / methods
Psychotherapy* / methods
Psychotherapy* / trends