What Is The Third Generation Of Psychotherapy?

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Third generation, or third wave, psychotherapy began in the 1990s and brought with it new perspectives to the treatment of pathology, as well as demands for better quality research (Spiegler & Guevremont, 2009). Because the third generation of psychotherapy is still relatively in its infancy, the developers of these therapies rely on good quality, large scale studies to further advance their therapies as well as to support and improve the efficacy of the therapies in being effective in treating pathology. The current state of the third generation will be discussed. First developed in the 1950 and 60s, first generation therapies focused on altering the directly observable problem behaviors of patients by altering the environmental conditions …show more content…

One study concluded that because the efficacy of the third generation does not significantly deviate from the efficacy of other generation, then they must rely on the same mechanisms and, thus, not be different generation of therapy (Hoffman, Sawyer, & Fang, 2010). Rather, they suggest that the third generation be regarded as an extension of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). While such a claim may be technically true—the mechanisms of change may not be significantly different from therapies in the third generation to therapies in the first or second generation —there are other differences, such as the previously discussed differences in first- and second-order change, that differentiate the therapies. With that being said, the authors regard such differences as not exclusive to each form of therapy, and therefore making aspect of both first and second generation therapies not incompatible with each other. Despite such criticism of the label of third generation to describe therapies that use acceptance and mindfulness principles to elicit second order change, the term is still popularly used. Additionally, whether or not a new generation should be used to refer to that therapies that fall under the third generation, the important thing to consider is whether or not the treatments are effective in reaching …show more content…

While first and second generation therapies have been developed, implemented, and research for decades, the third generation therapies lacked the sufficient research to regard them as evidence-based treatments in their earlier years. One meta-analysis published in 2008 found that the randomized controlled trials for third generation therapies used a methodology that was less stringent than other studies done on CBT (Öst, 2008). Additionally, the same article regarded all of the third generation therapies as not fulfilling the criteria to be considered empirically supported treatments. Five years later another study was published, which stated that a surge of good quality randomized controlled trials, as well as longitudinal studies, has been published in the last 3 to 5 years on the third generation therapies (Kahl, Winter, & Schweiger, 2012). The authors stated that because of such publications, third generation therapies became regarded as effective treatments and candidates for empirical support. In 2017 another study was published, which stated that there has been randomized controlled trials investigating treatment efficacy for most third generation treatments (Feliu-Soler, et al., 2017). It is evident that in a short period, third generation therapies have gone from having questionable effectiveness, to being

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