For some organizations, says Reed, fulfilling the requirement has simply meant distributing the American Psychiatric Association's guidelines to practitioners. In addition to being unclear about guidelines' utility, APA has concerns about the difficulty of applying guidelines to psychology in the first place. As Reed points out, psychologists are leery of anything that seems to restrict their own judgment. The cases they face rarely conform to the clear-cut diagnostic categories implicit in guidelines. And there's much less consensus on the best methods for treating patients with psychological rather than physical disorders, since there may be several effective alternative treatments for the same disorder.
Some psychologists reject even the premise of evidence-based medicine.
Given these concerns, APA has decided its role should be to help psychologists distinguish between good and bad guidelines. The document presents a series of criteria for evaluating guidelines, focusing on such issues as the quality and scope of research reviewed, the effectiveness and feasibility of recommended approaches and the composition of the panel that produced the guideline. In addition to helping practitioners decide which guidelines are most useful, the document will also provide them with ammunition for challenging guidelines they find objectionable. We're going to subject these guidelines to rigorous evaluation to ensure that what we're being asked to use stands up to good clinical practice and scientific methodology. APA members are also helping other organizations develop guidelines that affect psychological practice.