Outcome benchmarks for cognitive behaviour therapy delivered by student psychologist training clinics.

Objective: To provide outcome benchmarks for evaluating student psychologist‐led training clinics providing outpatient adult cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for high prevalence disorders, and illustrate their application to the evaluation of a South Australian community mental health‐based psychology training clinic: The Centre for Treatment of Anxiety and Depression (CTAD). Method: Study 1 derived aggregated uncontrolled effect sizes and clinically significant change rates for the CBT and control conditions of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), with critical values for demonstrating equivalence to RCTs and superiority to control conditions for anxiety disorders and depression. Study 2 provided benchmarks for demonstrating equivalence, and superiority to other student clinics. Study 3 calculated outcome effect sizes and clinically significant change rates of 342 consecutive CTAD clients allocated to student psychologists between 2009 and 2015, who provided at least two questionnaires, attended at least three sessions and were primarily seen by a student therapist. Aggregated point prevalence estimates of key demographic characteristics of studies contributing to benchmarks were provided. Results: RCT CBT produced higher effect sizes than student clinics, but similar rates of clinically significant change. The application of benchmarking to CTAD illustrated that evaluations of student psychologist effectiveness would differ depending on the benchmark used. Conclusion: We have provided best‐available benchmarks for evaluating student‐led adult outpatient CBT which we encourage other student clinics to adopt. The benchmarking approach provided a profile of CTAD's strengths and weaknesses. Examples of how benchmark comparisons could be used to inform service improvement were provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]