Who we are...
We are a group of clinical psychologists (mainly) from the universities of Marburg, Gießen and Frankfurt. Our goal is to inform and improve future psychological treatments. Therefore, we organize think tanks, expert interviews and exchanges between clinical psychologists and other scientists from relevant disciplines inside and outside of psychological science. We aim to make psychological treatment more effective, efficient and accessible for everybody.
Why does clinical psychology need to improve?
Despite its effectiveness in different conditions, psychological treatment is not without its challenges, such as high non-response rates, therapy dropout, and frequent relapse. Furthermore, psychotherapy also has a scaling problem and is therefore not freely accessible to numerous people even in industrialized countries. Unfortunately, despite decades of research and therapeutic practice, these issues have yet to be adequatly addressed. Unfortunately, current meta-analyses, e.g. in the field of anxiety disorders, may rather indicate more modest effect sizes when compared to previous estimates (see the figure below).
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Declining effect sizes in recent meta-analyses of placebo controlled trials of psychological treatments for anxiety disorders (by Stefan G. Hofmann)
How do we aim to change psychological treatment?
Our goal is to improve psychological treatment by providing clinically relevant meta-science in the form of review and perspective papers. To achieve this, we host national and international think tanks, panel discussions, and symposia. Additionally, we interview leading experts in the field of clinical psychology and related areas, and synthesize their insights into scientific publications. Specifically, we aim to:
- Enhance the effectiveness and accessibility of psychological treatments.
- Bridge the gap between psychotherapy research and basic science, such as neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology, and culturally and gender-sensitive psychology, to establish psychotherapy research as an integral part of the academic landscape.
- Offer recommendations for improving clinical research, including standards for conducting translational research, randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses, and implementation studies.
- Develop transdiagnostic and transtheoretical models of psychological treatment that can be applied across different conditions and populations.
Explore our work and connect with us!
Feel free to browse these sites to explore our work. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions regarding the project.
Contact
Max Berg
University of Marburg
Clinical Psychology Group I
Gutenbergstr. 18
35032 Marburg
Germany