The guidelines were sponsored by the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime. They were developed to encourage therapists to use mental health treatments that have “a sound theoretical basis, a good clinical-anecdotal literature, high acceptance among practitioners in the child abuse field, a low chance for causing harm, and empirical support for their utility with victims of abuse.”

The final report of the guidelines reviewed 24 treatments for abused children and their families. It found that 16 had some empirical support for their effectiveness. For most, though, this support was “rather thin.” Some treatments, such as Behavioral Parent Training, have been demonstrated effective in randomized controlled trials with non-abused children and their families but have not been similarly tested with abused children and their families.

The report noted that Trauma-focused Play Therapy is often used with young children believed to have been abused. The report judged it “to have a strong theoretical base, have an excellent clinical literature, carry little risk, and be widely accepted in the field. Yet it has no empirical evidence to support its claimed therapeutic effects.”

Trauma-focused Play Therapy was one of “several well-known and commonly used treatments” found to have “no empirical support for their efficacy.”

The guidelines encourage the use of treatments whose effectiveness has been shown empirically. “If an empirically supported treatment exists for a target population, clinically accepted but unsupported treatments should be viewed as alternative or second-choice therapies.”

The discussion of empirical support for treatment effectiveness is focused at pages 102-103 of the final report.