Manualized Behavior Therapy

Description of the Strategy

A child behavioral treatment manual provides explicit instructions and guidelines for assessing the problem and for delivering treatment procedures. While manuals vary a great deal in their level of specificity, the best manuals are disorder specific. In some instances, they include descriptions of the underlying theory of change on which the procedures or techniques are based.

Although treatment manuals have been used in behavior therapy since the late 1960s, the systematic use of therapy manuals became more popular after the 1995 report of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures, which argued for collecting and disseminating empirically supported treatments, or ESTs. ESTs are treatments that have research supporting their efficacy or ability to ...