When we took the editorship of Evidence-Based Mental Health (EBMH) at the end of 2013, we set two main objectives: to promote and embed an evidence-based medicine (EBM) approach into daily mental health clinical practice, and to get an impact factor (IF) for EBMH. Both aims have been big challenges and we have learnt a lot.

EBM has been around for about 30 years now, shaping and changing the way we practice medicine. When Guyatt and colleagues published their seminal paper in 1992,1 EBM was described as the combination of three intersecting domains: the best available evidence, the clinical state and circumstances, and patient’s preferences and values. EBM and EBMH have since continuously evolved to deepen our understanding of these three domains.

We keep complaining about the poor quality of studies in mental health. To properly assess the effects of interventions and devices before and after regulatory approval, we all know that randomised controlled trials are the best study design.2 3 However, real-world data are crucial to shed light on key clinical questions,4 especially when adverse events5 or prognostic factors6 are investigated. It necessarily …