Neuroscience
From 'the archives', first published in the Digest 19/1/2004
When it comes to client recovery, it's not the type of therapy that matters so much as the individual therapist who's giving it - that's the message from a study by researchers at Brigham Young and Ohio universities in America.
John Okiishi and a team of colleagues examined real-life data from 1,841 student clients with problems ranging from homesickness to personality disorder, who between them saw 56 therapists at a large university counselling centre. Before each therapy session, clients completed an outcome questionnaire designed to track their progress and recovery.
The researchers found no effect of therapists' sex, level/type of training, or their theoretical orientation (cognitive behavioural, humanistic or psychodynamic) on clients' recovery. There were, however, massive differences between therapists in the typical outcome of their clients and the duration of therapy. A client seeing one of the top three therapists(on average) could expect to feel dramatically better after a few weeks treatment. By contrast, a client seen by one of the bottom three therapists could expect, on average, to feel the same, possibly worse, after three times as much treatment. The range of severity of clients' problems at treatment onset was similar for the different therapists.
The authors concluded "something about these (more successful) therapists and the way they work, independent of the amount of time spent with clients, has a significant impact. . . There is an urgent need to take account of the effectiveness of the individual therapist and it is time for clinicians to welcome such research".
______________________________
Okishi, J., Lambert, M.J., Nielsen, S.L. & Ogles, B.M. (2003). Waiting for supershrink: an empirical analysis of therapist effects. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 10, 361-373.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Introducing the Super Shrink
From 'the archives', first published in the Digest 19/1/2004When it comes to client recovery, it's not the type of therapy that matters so much as the individual therapist who's giving it - that's the message from a study by researchers at Brigham Young and Ohio universities in America.
John Okiishi and a team of colleagues examined real-life data from 1,841 student clients with problems ranging from homesickness to personality disorder, who between them saw 56 therapists at a large university counselling centre. Before each therapy session, clients completed an outcome questionnaire designed to track their progress and recovery.
The researchers found no effect of therapists' sex, level/type of training, or their theoretical orientation (cognitive behavioural, humanistic or psychodynamic) on clients' recovery. There were, however, massive differences between therapists in the typical outcome of their clients and the duration of therapy. A client seeing one of the top three therapists(on average) could expect to feel dramatically better after a few weeks treatment. By contrast, a client seen by one of the bottom three therapists could expect, on average, to feel the same, possibly worse, after three times as much treatment. The range of severity of clients' problems at treatment onset was similar for the different therapists.
The authors concluded "something about these (more successful) therapists and the way they work, independent of the amount of time spent with clients, has a significant impact. . . There is an urgent need to take account of the effectiveness of the individual therapist and it is time for clinicians to welcome such research".
______________________________
Okishi, J., Lambert, M.J., Nielsen, S.L. & Ogles, B.M. (2003). Waiting for supershrink: an empirical analysis of therapist effects. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 10, 361-373.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- It Can Be A Good Thing For A Therapist And Client To Disagree About The Client's Problems
Rapport between a client and therapist is important for therapy to be successful, and part of that is agreeing about the aims of the exercise. You’d think this would include the therapist and client agreeing about the specific nature of the client’s...
- Can Therapists Tell When Their Clients Have Deteriorated?
About five to ten per cent of the time, people in therapy get worse instead of better. What should psychotherapists do in such cases? Hang on a minute. There's no point answering that question unless therapists can recognise that a client has deteriorated...
- Nice Therapist, Shame About The Symptoms
By Dryden Badenoch, of The Relaxed Therapist. Medical outcome research tends to focus upon finding the best drug to treat a given disease. The patient's role is often no more than the repository of the disease and the recipient of the drug: their...
- Successful Therapists Focus On Their Clients' Strengths
Research is increasingly showing that the success of therapy depends not on the theoretical orientation of the therapist, but on key therapeutic processes that cross theoretical boundaries. Two such processes are ‘problem activation’ – helping...
- Cognitive Therapy On The Couch
Cognitive therapy for depression could be improved by the therapist focusing more on the therapeutic process itself. That’s according to Jonathan Kanter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and colleagues who compared the effectiveness of therapy given...