Clinical Decision Analysis

Abstract

An analogy is drawn between decision analysis and the somewhat older profession of psychotherapy. Both offer a variety of techniques designed to help people function in a difficult and uncertain environment; both developed rapidly, sustained by a coherent underlying theory and anecdotal evidence of having helped some clients. Over the past half century, psychotherapy has faced a series of crises concerned with its transformation from an art to a clinical science. These include testing the effectiveness of various forms of therapy, validating elements of treatment programs and of the assumptions underlying therapy, improving the clinical skills of individual practitioners, and considering the broader political, social, ideological and ethical issues raised by psychotherapy. It is hoped that by considering the issues that a related profession has identified, the approaches it has developed to study those issues, and the (partial) conclusions it has reached, we can facilitate the development of decision analysis.