COVID-19 presents significant social, economic, and medical challenges. Because COVID-19 has already begun to precipitate huge increases in mental health problems, clinical psychological science must assert a leadership role in guiding a national response to this secondary crisis. In this paper, COVID-19 is conceptualized as a unique, compounding, multidimensional stressor that will create a vast need for intervention and necessitate new paradigms for mental health service delivery and training. Urgent challenge areas across developmental periods are discussed, followed by a review of psychological symptoms that likely will increase in prevalence and require innovative solutions in both science and practice. Implications for new research directions, clinical approaches, and policy issues are discussed to highlight the opportunities for clinical psychological science to emerge as an updated, contemporary field capable of addressing the burden of mental illness and distress in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond.

It is argued that the design of contemporary psychotherapy outcome studies is conceptually incompatible with the models of psychotherapy evaluated in those studies. Contemporary outcome studies are incompatible with psychotherapy models because the outcome studies treat patients with standardized treatments that are assigned on the basis of psychiatric diagnosis rather than with individualized treatments based on a theory-driven psychological assessment of the individual's difficulties. One possible remedy, idiographic outcome studies using a case formulation model of assessment and treatment, is proposed here. It is suggested that this research strategy may narrow the scientist-practitioner gap and make it easier to demonstrate differential outcomes of different treatments.

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Two clinicians provided opposite answers to the title question: Persons argued that information from randomized controlled trials (RCIs) is vital to clinicians, and Silberschatz argued that information from RCIs is irrelevant to clinicians. Persons argued that clinicians cannot provide top quality care to their patients without attending to findings of RCIs and that clinicians have an ethical responsibility to inform patients about, recommend, and provide treatments supported by RCIs before informing patients about, recommending, and providing treatments shown to be inferior in RCIs or not evaluated in RCIs. Silberschatz argued that RCIs do not and cannot answer questions that concern practicing clinicians. He advocates alternative research approaches (effectiveness studies, quasi-experimental methods, case-specific research) for studying psychotherapy. The question of whether the results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are useful to practicing clinicians is a controversial one in the field of the psychological therapies. We present the two sides of the argument, with Persons arguing that information from RCTs is vital to clinicians and Silberschatz arguing that information from RCTs is irrelevant. After presenting each of our points of view, each author rebuts the other's position. We conclude with a brief review of our key points of agreement and disagreement. Two Points of View Results of RCTs Are Vital to Clinicians (Jacqueline B. Persons) Clinicians must attend to the results of RCTs for clinical, ethical, and legal reasons. I present examples of clinically useful information provided by RCTs. I also describe factors that make it difficult to export RCT-supported protocols from research to clinical settings, and I propose strategies for alleviating some of those difficulties.

This article argues that research efforts to understand the nature of the psychological processes underlying such psychological phenomena as formal thought disorder, delusions, and hallucinations will be more successful if the phenomena themselves are studied directly than if diagnostic categories (e.g., schizophrenia) are studied. This point is illustrated through references to the study of cognitive mechanisms underlying symptoms of schizophrenia. However, the advantages of the symptom approach are also applicable to the study of other types of psychopathology and other types of underlying mechanisms (e.g., physiological or biochemical mechanisms).