Psychotherapy Evaluation and Research Lab at Sheffield (PEARLS)

PEARLS brings together a group of academics, clinicians, research fellows and postgraduate students whose research focuses on the evaluation of routinely delivered psychological interventions.

Taking a pragmatic approach, the Lab’s mission is to better understand and then improve the effects of psychological therapies delivered in routine healthcare settings.

Collectively, our expertise and interests are in the analysis of practice-based datasets and pragmatic trials carried out in clinical settings, to understand how therapy works in routine care, and why clinical outcomes vary across services, therapy models, therapists and patients.

What we do

In order to fulfil our mission to improve routine psychological care through the development of practice-based evidence, we

Featured outputs: 

Fernández-Alvarez, J., Molinari, G., Kilcullen, R., Delgadillo, J., Drill, R., Errázuriz, P., Falkenstrom, F., Firth, N., O'Shea, A., Paz, C., Youn, S. J., & Castonguay, L. G. (2023). The importance of conducting practice-oriented research with underserved populations. Administration and Policy in Mental Health, 10.1007/s10488-023-01337-z. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-023-01337-z


Deisenhofer, A. K., Barkham, M., Beierl, E. T., Schwartz, B., Aafjes-van Doorn, K., Beevers, C. G., Berwian, I. M., Blackwell, S. E., Bockting, C. L., Brakemeier, E. L., Brown, G., Buckman, J. E. J., Castonguay, L. G., Cusack, C. E., Dalgleish, T., de Jong, K., Delgadillo, J., DeRubeis, R. J., Driessen, E., Ehrenreich-May, J., … Cohen, Z. D. (2024). Implementing precision methods in personalizing psychological therapies: Barriers and possible ways forward. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 172, 104443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2023.104443



Find out more

Featured books

A detailed account of our practice-based research tradition can be found in: Barkham, M., Hardy, G. E., and Mellor-Clark, J. (eds.) (2010). Developing and delivering practice-based evidence: A guide for the psychological therapies. Wiley and Sons.

Bergin and Garfield's handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change (2021) is the pre-eminent research text focusing on psychological therapies. The seventh edition is edited by Michael Barkham (UK), Wolfgang Lutz (Germany) and Louis G Castonguay (US). Wiley and Sons.