The methodology of therapeutic trials is well-established in somatic pathologies. Is this also the case in psychiatry, and in particular, the psychiatry of the adolescent? Four key methodological points relating to the evaluation of any therapy will be examined successively: what are the therapies to be compared? Which patients are included? How do we evaluate the effectiveness of the therapies? How can we ensure that the treatment groups are comparable? In this way we will see that the evaluation of therapies in psychiatry has, in the first approximation, to do with the same methodology that is used to compare therapies in somatic medicine. Especially strong similarities can be found, for example, with approaches used for the evaluation of surgical treatments.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°3, pp. 789-795.