Argument Against APA Guidelines

Recently, the APA announced guidelines that would endorse specific symptoms, and treatments, for PTSD. This falls under the “specific ingredients” category and associates the mental illness with specific treatments and practices, or guidelines, that the clinicians should follow. In light of these guidelines, a group that argues for “common factors” is taking a stance against APA guidelines. Common factors can be defined as the relationships, ideas, and empathy that spurs from a client-patient relationship that can eventually lead to the client getting better and recovering (in this case, from PTSD). The guidelines would restrict clinicians to one specific train of thought, not allowing for this free-flowing and adaptive therapeutic relationship that can be created during psychotherapy. The group continues to talk about the faults in the guidelines, asserting that they are not correct, and that they fail to look at a wide variety of treatments and certain needs

These proponents realize that there are other treatments that have had success, but that a lack of foundation and rules for clinicians can result in it being hard to find a doctor who has empirically sound methods. The purpose of specific ingredients, in essence, is meant to streamline and solidify a singular process for diagnosing and treating a disorder. This seems to try and make it so that the majority of people with mental illness (specifically PTSD in this article) get sound treatment. Furthermore, the APA proponents acknowledge that new and better treatments can be found, and encourage research. The guidelines are a fluid document, and meant to be updated. This being said, specific ingredients seem to limit therapeutic relationships and ideas as they seem to stop this exploration within an individual patient, but encourage exploration on treatments across all