Neuroscience
There's a growing body of evidence showing that, rather than just focusing on problems, it can be beneficial for psychologists to remind clients of their strengths - an approach sometimes known as "resource activation".
Now Christoph Fluckiger and Martin Holtforth have taken this a stage further. They've found that getting psychologists to think about their clients' strengths for a few minutes before a therapy session is great for the quality of the therapist-client relationship and leads to improved recovery for the clients.
Twenty trainee psychotherapists practising an eclectic form of therapy, including CBT, each saw a client for twenty sessions. Before and after each of the first five sessions, the therapists had a five minute chat with a colleague about their client's strengths and how successfully they had managed to remind their client of his or her strengths.
The researchers dug out comparison data on twenty similar therapist-client pairs treated at the same clinic in the past. Compared with these previous therapist-client pairs, the trainee psychotherapists primed to think about their clients' strengths subsequently had a better relationship with their clients (as judged by videotapes of their sessions) and their clients showed greater improvement by their twentieth session.
"Future studies need to investigate further which specific resource-activating therapist behaviours are most effective for which patients and for which specific therapist," the researchers said.
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Fluckiger, C., Grosse Holtforth, M. (2008). Focusing the therapist's attention on the patient's strengths: a preliminary study to foster a mechanism of change in outpatient psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64(7), 876-890. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20493
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Therapy more effective when psychologists focus on their clients' strengths
There's a growing body of evidence showing that, rather than just focusing on problems, it can be beneficial for psychologists to remind clients of their strengths - an approach sometimes known as "resource activation".Now Christoph Fluckiger and Martin Holtforth have taken this a stage further. They've found that getting psychologists to think about their clients' strengths for a few minutes before a therapy session is great for the quality of the therapist-client relationship and leads to improved recovery for the clients.
Twenty trainee psychotherapists practising an eclectic form of therapy, including CBT, each saw a client for twenty sessions. Before and after each of the first five sessions, the therapists had a five minute chat with a colleague about their client's strengths and how successfully they had managed to remind their client of his or her strengths.
The researchers dug out comparison data on twenty similar therapist-client pairs treated at the same clinic in the past. Compared with these previous therapist-client pairs, the trainee psychotherapists primed to think about their clients' strengths subsequently had a better relationship with their clients (as judged by videotapes of their sessions) and their clients showed greater improvement by their twentieth session.
"Future studies need to investigate further which specific resource-activating therapist behaviours are most effective for which patients and for which specific therapist," the researchers said.
_________________________________
Fluckiger, C., Grosse Holtforth, M. (2008). Focusing the therapist's attention on the patient's strengths: a preliminary study to foster a mechanism of change in outpatient psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64(7), 876-890. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20493
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...
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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...
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When choosing a therapist, you’d be forgiven for wanting someone with plenty of experience. But then you might well be unaware of all the studies that, to psychotherapy’s embarrassment, have failed to find any association between therapist experience...
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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...
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