Psychotherapists are becoming busier every day and are constantly trying to manage the many different responsibilities they have with the increase in demand for psychological services. Responsibilities can include assessment, treatment planning, clinical preparation, individual therapy, group therapy, case management, case consultation, documentation, coordinating care, supervision, training, and outreach. One setting that has been heavily […]
Premature termination is a pervasive problem in psychotherapy (Garfield, 1994) and campus mental health services are especially vulnerable to increased rates of this problem. Although client expectations have consistently been associated with premature termination (e.g., Callahan et al., 2009; Dew & Bickman, 2005; Reis & Brown, 2006), the role of therapist expectations is still not […]
Many children participate in the classic science project of nurturing a seedling in a Dixie cup and observing the ensuing course of germination. The child’s primary job is to exercise patience with the process, punctuated by subtle manipulation of the seedling’s environment to ensure ideal growth conditions. Hopefully, in time, the seedling pokes out of […]
Abstract Couple therapy outcomes tend to be judged by randomized controlled trial evidence, which comes primarily from the United States. United Kingdom and European outcome studies have tended to be naturalistic and there is a debate as to whether “laboratory” (RCT) studies are useful benchmarks for the outcomes of “clinic” (naturalistic) studies, not least because […]
Background Research has demonstrated significant between-therapist variability in both process (e.g., working alliance) and outcome (e.g., symptom reduction), pointing to the so-called therapist effect (Baldwin & Imel, 2013). Although still in its infancy with regard to empirical scrutiny, thinking in this area has largely assumed that more effective therapists possess specific characteristics that foster consistently […]
Domain Note: The Role of Deliberate Practice across the Professional Lifespan The Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy Education and Training Committee is excited to be providing a series of articles on the role of deliberate practice (DP) in the development of highly effective psychotherapists. The initial article (Love, Davis, & Callahan, 2016) focused on […]
This question was asked by Clara Hill as a moderator for a structured discussion section on expertise in psychotherapy in the last international meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research in Philadelphia in June 2015. The background for the discussion was an article by Tracey, Wampold, Lichtenberg, and Goodyear (2014) in which the authors argued […]
Introduction Are you any good as a therapist? Overall, therapists seem to be quite a confident group. A study by Walfish, McAllister, O’Donnell, and Lambert (2012) asked 129 therapists to compare their psychotherapy results to those of their peers. They found that 25% of the therapists estimated that their results were in the upper 10% […]
A recent body of psychotherapy research is converging on the benefits of using client process and outcome feedback in clinical practice (Lambert & Shimokawa, 2011). Continual client feedback, also known as “routine outcomes monitoring,” “progress monitoring,” or “practice-based evidence,” refers to the collection of self-report data (e.g., symptoms, well-being, and the therapeutic alliance) from clients […]
The past decade has seen a spike in research testing the use of mindfulness in the treatment of many physical and mental health problems. As one example of the increasing popularity, a PsycInfo search using the keyword “mindfulness” identified 2,672 peer-reviewed articles published through 2014. When citations are separated by year, the recent popularity is […]