3. Why is it important that treatment for people with DD be research proven and/or based on best practice standards?

Modern medicine has provided amazing advances for our health, longevity, and for society in general. The human lifespan has increased, and people are healthier into their old age than ever before. Children born today will have only academic knowledge of diseases like Polio, which affected thousands upon thousands of people less than 100 years ago. 

All of these advances became possible only after medicine adopted research proven and/or best practice standard based treatment. Prior to this medical treatment was largely based upon folklore.

We sometimes take modern medicine for granted nowadays. To put this into perspective, imagine that you have a cut on your hand that has become infected. Today you would go to the doctor and she would follow best practice standards by prescribing a research proven treatment - an antibiotic. 

Before the adoption of research proven and/or best practice standard based treatment your doctor would likely have prescribed bloodletting - a treatment that not only would have failed to help, but would have weakened you and made you less able to fight off the infection on your own. 

Mental health treatment has undergone a similar transformation. 100 years ago if you had gone to your doctor to treat depression he might have given you cocaine - Freud prescribed it to several of his patients (and himself). We know now, through research that cocaine is highly addictive, causes heart problems, and is not an effective treatment for depression - in fact, it can make depression much worse. In Freud's day, however, treatments did not have to be proven before being used. 

Today, if your doctor tried to treat your infection with bloodletting, or your depression with cocaine, you would find another doctor.