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In 2024, the World Health Organization proposed quite useful guidelines for implementing psychotherapeutic skills into multiprofessional care of traumatized and mentally ill women and men world wide (WHO, 2024). Unfortunately the authors omitted psychodynamic concepts although they have been proven to be at least as efficient as other psychotherapeutic schools and as well suitable for multiprofessional training.
Falk Leichsenring and his co-authors published a very important statement to add psychodynamic approaches into the WHO guidelines.
The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) is glad to publish this text also into its Journal, that is the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, to strongly support its statements and to encourage the distribution of psychodynamic approaches in the whole mental field.
We thank Falk Leichsenring and his co-authors as well as The Lancet Psychiatry for the permission to publish their text below.
WHO (2024) Psychological interventions implementation manual: integrating evidence-based psychological interventions into existing services. ISBN 978-92-4-008714-9 (accessed March 12, 2025)
In 2024, WHO issued updated guidelines for treating mental health conditions, emphasising evidence- based manual-guided psychotherapeutic treatments.1 We applaud WHO’s effort to broaden access to evidence-based psychotherapy. Yet, we are concerned that the recommendations predominantly endorse behavioural therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy for both adults and young people. This selection overlooks the substantial body of evidence supporting other therapeutic approaches, including but not limited to psychodynamic therapy, except for a brief acknowledgment of this method’s use in treating depression. High-quality research reviews published in leading scientific journals2 have shown that manual- guided psychodynamic therapy meets the updated American Psychological Association’s crit