Recently an article by Jean Mercer, Ph.D. was published that presented her understanding of the research, theory, and practice of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (2014).
The DDPI Board do not recognise the description of DDP presented by Dr. Mercer. It is our judgment that she has several misunderstandings about the theory and practice of DDP which account for a number of inaccuracies or incomplete descriptions of DDP in her paper that we wish to address.
The DDPI Board has written a brief response to this article. A detailed response is near completion.
DDPI Board statement in response to an article written by Dr Jean Mercer (2014).
Both the brief and the full response addresses errors in:
- The description of the development of DDP as an intervention for foster and adoptive children and their families;
- Misunderstandings about how DDP is practiced and in the US, Canada, and the UK
- Misunderstandings about the way theory underpins the model informing the practice of DDP
As described above, the DDPI Board do not dispute the lack of an RCT informed evidence base for DDP at the current time and we would like to take the opportunity to additionally:
- Describe the evidence base we currently do have and plans that we have in place to provide a more robust research evidence base in the future.