Evidence-Based Practice

TAO’s programs all use extensively researched and proven treatments, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety and depression, Behavioral Activation for depression, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for depression, chronic pain, stress management, and resilience development.  Substance Abuse modules use Motivational Interviewing, Relapse Prevention, and Harm Reduction. 

The TAO research team, along with our University partners from the University of Florida and Georgia Tech University, have over three decades of experience researching treatment effectiveness. In a clinical trial of TAO for anxiety, patients treated with TAO’s online system were compared with patients treated with traditional face-to-face weekly psychotherapy. The patients treated with TAO had more symptom improvement, a greater sense of well-being, and better life functioning than patients treated with traditional therapy.   
 

Benton SA, Heesacker M, Snowden SJ, Lee G. (2016).   Therapist-Assisted, Online (TAO) Intervention for Anxiety in College Students: TAO Outperformed Treatment as Usual Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. DOI: 10.1037/pro0000097

Practice-Based Evidence

While research on effective therapy is valuable, what is most relevant to the person seeking help is whether that treatment, as delivered, is effective in their life.  For the healthcare provider or Service Administrator, the concern is whether the treatment is effective with their patients. 

TAO provides practice-based evidence at two levels. First, TAO uses well-researched measures of therapeutic change including the Behavioral Health Measure-20, the Warwick-Edinburgh Well-being Scale, the PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire) and the GAD-7.  Any of these measures can be administered weekly to patients and the Therapist Dashboard graphically displays the results across time. The Administrator Dashboard displays aggregate data for all patients in the system from each clinic or service. In addition, the dashboard provides reports on patient satisfaction and utilization. Evidence of TAO’s effectiveness is available at the click of a button. 

We benchmarked outcomes for 700 patients treated with TAO at 15 college mental health clinics with a published study of outcomes for 25 student mental health clinics.  Patients treated with TAO had more improvement than patients in traditional therapy on several scales. 

Comparison study:  
Owen, J.J., Adelson, J., Budge, S., Kopta, S.M., Reese, R. J., (2014).  Good-enough level and dose-effect models: Variation among outcomes and therapists. Psychotherapy Research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2014.966346