STS Research Seminar with Sarah Marks (Birkbeck)

Evidence-Based Medicine and Policy-Making in Britain, 1948-2010

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is arguably the most dominant form of psychotherapeutic intervention, at least in the western world, and takes an increasingly prominent role in scaled-up Global Mental Health interventions in South Asia, Africa and beyond - though not without controversy. While it has transnational origins, CBT and its predecessor, behaviour therapy, have had particular success in Britain since the 1950s, culminating with the Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service-rollout since 2007, initiated by New Labour’s Lord Richard Layard as ‘The New Deal for Mental Health’. This paper will draw on clinical, professional and government archival material, and oral histories with clinicians and policy-makers, to place the rise of CBT in historical context. It traces the key roles of evidence-based medicine in the NHS since its earliest decades, the activism of clinical psychologists linked to their professional identity as ‘scientist-practitioners’, and Labour’s science policy and economic theory around welfare and economic performance.

This event will also be held virtually please register Here