In the context of the project "Treatment by clinical psychologists" on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health, this project part II aimed to provide a literature overview on methods of treatment and areas of application of clinical-psychological treatment.

On the basis of a systematic literature search, we extracted information on indication areas and interventions from the Cochrane Reviews and HTA reports as well as from an English-language handbook and summarised the information for each indication classified according to ICD-10.

We included a total of 44 Cochrane Reviews and 7 HTA reports that covered most of the "F categories" from the ICD-10 classification. The most frequently mentioned intervention was cognitive behavioural therapy, followed by other methods of treatment, such as psychodynamic therapy, counselling, relaxation therapy, interpersonal therapy, hypnotherapy or cognitive therapy. For a first overview regarding the evidence for effectiveness, we extracted the number of included primary studies and patients and described the conclusions of the reviews’ authors. There is a lot of research activity in the area of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, whereas we identified only few reviews that addressed children and adolescents.

It is difficult to draw a line between psychological interventions and, for example, psychosocial, educational or counselling interventions. Due to the mostly synonymous use of the terms "psychological" and "psychotherapy", which is the result of different regulatory frameworks and understanding of psychotherapy in other Western countries compared to Austria, a strict differentiation on the basis of the international scientific literature between those areas is not possible.

This project part presents a literature overview on indications and methods of treatment in the international scientific literature and provides initial information on the effectiveness of the interventions. The results can give indications for further, more detailed evidence analyses which should, apart from the effectiveness in specific indications, also analyse the duration and intensity of the intervention as well as the care provider.