The meeting was led by Tytus Koweszko, doctor of health sciences, assistant professor at the MUW’s Department of Environmental Psychiatry, together with the initiator of the event – habilitated doctor Anna Zajenkowska, professor at the Scientific Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Economic and Humane Sciences in Warsaw.
Psychotherapy (along with pharmacotherapy) is one of the main forms of help for patients with mental health disorders. Different types of therapy are based on different methods of assessing effectiveness, which results in heterogeneous treatment procedures that may lead to inconclusive treatment results. And from a research perspective, it makes it difficult to compare effectiveness of different therapy methods, which adversely affects the public perception of psychotherapy.
The starting point of the expert debate was the need to create consistent and recognized standards that would allow for reliable research on psychotherapy and appropriate verification of treatment progress.
Three main issues were raised during the meeting: What are the criteria for an approach to be considered evidence-based? How do research and theory define the effectiveness of psychotherapy? Is it worth creating networks of psychotherapy centers that collaboratively collect data?
The following persons took part in the discussion: habilitated doctor Łukasz Gawęda – Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, habilitated doctor Sławomir Murawiec – clinician and researcher, habilitated doctor Rafał Styła – Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw, habilitated doctor Paweł Holas – Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw, professor Jarosław Michałowski – SWPS University, doctor Łukasz Müldner-Nieckowski – national psychotherapy consultant, doctor Sylwia Kita – SWPS University, doctor Jarosław Polak – Polish Psychodynamic Society, doctor Joachim Kowalski – Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, doctor Jerzy A. Sobański – Department of Psychotherapy of Jagiellonian University, doctor Katarzyna Klasa – Department of Psychotherapy of Jagiellonian University, Anna Mędrzejewska – Rasztów Institute of Group Analysis, Martyna Reder-Bogusz – Polish Psychodynamic Society.
The organization of the “Psychotherapy Round Table” was supported by professor Agata Szulc, head of the Clinic of Psychiatry of the Faculty of Health Sciences, and habilitated doctor Andrzej Silczuk, head of the Department of Environmental Psychiatry.