What is important for a psychiatric patient in a trial

A paper published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (P&P) analyzes the measures that are chosen as outcome in psychiatric trials and questions their clinical validity.The Authors advocate the use of simpler measures and more ecologically valid designs to answer the central questions on how do we know if one treatment works better than another, and who is going to benefit of such treatments. As highlighted by Arfken and Balon, the use of valid and reliable scales plays an essential role in research. However, the scales commonly used in psychiatry are difficult to understand.