Blog
The Psychotherapy Practice Research Network (PPRNet) blog began in 2013 in response to psychotherapy clinicians, researchers, and educators who expressed interest in receiving regular information about current practice-oriented psychotherapy research. It offers a monthly summary of two or three published psychotherapy research articles. Each summary is authored by Dr. Tasca and highlights practice implications of selected articles. Past blogs are available in the archives. This content is only available in English.
This month...
…I blog about the impact of COVID-19 on mental health workers' well-being, the impact of working alliance and therapist cultural humility on the impact of microaggressions, and ways of addressing cultural topics in psychotherapy
Type of Research
Topics
- ALL Topics (clear)
- Adherance
- Alliance and Therapeutic Relationship
- Anxiety Disorders
- Attachment
- Attendance, Attrition, and Drop-Out
- Client Factors
- Client Preferences
- Cognitive Therapy (CT) and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Combination Therapy
- Common Factors
- Cost-effectiveness
- Depression and Depressive Symptoms
- Efficacy of Treatments
- Empathy
- Feedback and Progress Monitoring
- Group Psychotherapy
- Illness and Medical Comorbidities
- Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT)
- Long-term Outcomes
- Medications/Pharmacotherapy
- Miscellaneous
- Neuroscience and Brain
- Outcomes and Deterioration
- Personality Disorders
- Placebo Effect
- Practice-Based Research and Practice Research Networks
- Psychodynamic Therapy (PDT)
- Resistance and Reactance
- Self-Reflection and Awareness
- Suicide and Crisis Intervention
- Termination
- Therapist Factors
- Training
- Transference and Countertransference
- Trauma and/or PTSD
- Treatment Length and Frequency
January 2023
The Impact of COVID-19 on Mental Health Workers’ Well-Being
The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed the health care system worldwide. Stressors on health care workers have included misinformation, rapidly changing knowledge of the virus, the politicization of mask wearing, high transmission rates, and high rates of patients requiring critical care. There has been much written about the impact of the pandemic on physicians and nurses caused by these factors. Much less attention has been paid to the experiences of mental health workers who had to rapidly transition to telehealth, which required immediate adaptations and learning with little training and preparation. In this qualitative study, Mittal and colleagues thematically analyzed text responses of 136 mental health professionals to questions about the impact of telehealth work during the pandemic on mental health and on clinical practice. The mental health professionals were from several disciplines (psychology, social work, counseling), most were women (84%), White (81%), with a mean age of 45.5 years. First, several themes emerged regarding providers’ mental health. Most indicated that their own experiences of exhaustion and stress were mirrored in their patients’ experiences, which made it harder to cope. Another common experience was “Zoom fatigue”, in which seeing clients online was more tiring, less enjoyable, and more isolating. Many also reported a decline in their physical health – that is, they experienced more headaches, trouble sleeping, poor appetite, and eye strain. Some reported a heightened sense of meaning in their work, such as a greater sense of pride and meaning derived from helping people during a particularly troubling time. Second, several themes were identified related to clinical practice. Practicing and living in the same space was particularly challenging for some - practicing from home while being responsible for other members of the household (children) was difficult and distracting. Many reported a decrease in work satisfaction and lower motivation, both of which impacted their level of empathy for and engagement with clients. Some reported positive effects especially related to having more time due to reduced commuting, and a greater sense of empathy for clients who felt isolated themselves.
Practice Implications
The COVID-19 pandemic and using telehealth for work required a significant shift in practice for mental health professionals. The shift meant important changes in how we practice and how we live our lives. And so, it is not surprising that mental health professionals’ well-being has been impacted by this transition and the challenges it poses. It is important to recognize the stressors related to telehealth work and to try to mitigate their impact. Some authors have suggested ways of reducing the negative impact of increased screen time on mental health providers, such as: taking breaks whenever possible, including 5 to 10 minutes between sessions; using previous “commute time” for self-care (social connection, physical activity); increasing social and professional connections with planned gatherings; and prioritizing self-care even more, including physical exercise and personal therapy.
Working Alliance and Therapist Cultural Humility Reduce the Impact of Microaggressions
A lack of culturally competent care can have negative impacts on therapy outcomes for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and for women who experience discrimination based on gender. Often these negative outcomes occur because of microaggressions – which are a form of alliance rupture in the therapeutic relationship caused by subtle, intentional, or unintentional messages that degrade BIPOC, women, and other historically excluded groups. The majority of BIPOC clients (81%) and women (53%) report experiencing a therapist microaggression over the course of psychotherapy. A therapist’s cultural humility (valuing the importance of culture in their client’s experience) and the therapeutic alliance (client-therapist collaborative agreement on tasks and goals of therapy) may reduce the negative impact of microaggressions committed by the therapist. This study by DeBlaere and colleagues looked at the association between microaggressions experienced by BIPOC women and therapy outcomes, and whether this association was reduced by higher levels of therapist cultural humility and therapeutic alliance. The clients were 288 BIPOC women who were treated by a psychotherapist (81% had a female therapist, and 46% had a White therapist). Both racial and gender microaggressions were associated with worse outcomes. Using structural equation modeling to assess indirect effects, the authors found a significant indirect effect of racial microaggressions (−.12, 95% CI [−.35, −.07]) and gender microaggressions (−.10, 95% CI [−.36, −.05]) on positive therapy outcomes, through both cultural humility and working alliance, accounting for 24% of the variance in outcomes. That is, the effect of microaggressions on outcomes was partly explained by the level of therapist cultural humility and by the therapeutic alliance. The most common racial microaggression reported by clients was: “My counselor avoided discussing or addressing cultural issues in our sessions”, and the most common gender microaggression was: “My therapist encouraged me to be less assertive so that I do not present myself as being aggressive”.
Practice Implications
Unfortunately, therapist racial and gender microaggressions are common. However, therapists who practice cultural humility and who work at developing a therapeutic alliance may commit fewer microaggressions and can more easily mitigate the negative effects of microaggressions should they occur. Taking steps to develop cultural humility, strengthening the alliance, and repairing alliance ruptures through professional development may be ways of improving therapy outcomes for BIPOC women.
Ways to Address Cultural Topics in Psychotherapy
When ethnic minority members receive psychotherapy, they tend to show higher premature drop-out rates. One of the factors associated with these negative outcomes may be that therapists may not know how to effectively address the cultural conversations that inevitably arise with some clients. To help therapists, some authors developed a Multicultural Orientation Framework (MCO) that consists of cultural humility (taking an other-oriented stance regarding culture while remaining non-defensive about one’s own limitations), cultural opportunities (discussing clients’ cultural identities when they emerge in therapy), and cultural comfort (a therapist’s genuine comfort in discussing cultural topics). Such a stance may also help therapists to address microaggressions (intentional or unintentional verbal or behavioral indignities based on cultural identity). One useful therapist stance is “broaching” of culturally sensitive topics – that is, therapists’ engaging in explicit dialogue with clients about culture. Previous research indicates that broaching culturally topics can benefit the therapeutic alliance and clients’ perception of therapist multicultural competence. In this survey study, Depauw and colleagues looked at three aspects of broaching – direct broaching in which a therapist explicitly raises cultural topics (“I noticed that we both have a different ethnic background…), indirect broaching in which a therapist is receptive to cultural topics but with less focused exploration (“…you mentioned your friend doesn’t understand your experiences, are there other situations in which that happened…?”), and avoiding broaching in which a therapist sidesteps cultural conversations even when a client brings them up. Depauw and colleagues surveyed 211 psychotherapy clients in the United Kingdom who identified as not being a member of the predominant social group (i.e., with regard to ethnicity, gender/sexual expression, religion, socioeconomic status, ability, and others). The researchers asked whether therapists broached cultural identity topics, what type of broaching approach a therapist took, and clients also rated their therapist’s level of MCO (cultural comfort, cultural humility, and missed opportunities) and therapist microaggressions. The results revealed that both therapist direct and indirect broaching of cultural topics were favorably associated with a client’s rating of the therapist’s MCO and with fewer microaggressions. Therapists’ avoidance of broaching of cultural topics was associated with negative ratings of therapist MCO and with more microaggressions. When only considering the clients’ most important self-identified cultural identity, the researchers found that indirect broaching was favorably related to all aspects of MCO and fewer microaggression, direct broaching was only associated with fewer missed opportunities, and avoidant broaching was unfavorably related to all aspects of MCO and microaggressions.
Practice Implications
The results of this survey of clients suggest that therapists should not avoid cultural content in therapy. Broaching culturally sensitive topics is important for a good therapeutic experience for clients with diverse identities. In some cases, for clients’ primary cultural identity, indirect broaching of culturally sensitive topics may be more effective. Therapists should consider a client’s identity in terms of how the client experiences it and the importance of the identity to the client.
December 2022
Can Psychotherapists be Trained to Maintain a Therapeutic Alliance?
Tasca, G. A., Ravitz, P., Hunter, J., Chyurlia, L., Baker, S., Balfour, L., Mcquaid, N., Pain, C., Compare, A., Brugnera, A., & Leszcz, M. (2022, November 10). Training community-based psychotherapists to maintain a therapeutic alliance: A Psychotherapy Practice Research Network study. Psychotherapy. Advance online publication.
The therapeutic alliance refers to a collaborative agreement between therapist and patient on the tasks and goals of therapy, and their relational bond. Research demonstrates that the alliance is one of the most reliable predictors of patient outcome. Much of the research on the alliance focused on asking either the patient or the therapist to rate the alliance. But the alliance is a dyadic concept, that is, it involves the shared perceptions of the therapeutic relationship by patient and therapist. More recent research has focused on patient-therapist congruence (degree of agreement or disagreement) of their perceptions of the alliance. The Psychotherapy Practice Research Network (PPRNet) recently completed a study in which community-based psychotherapists were trained to develop and maintain a therapeutic alliance. We examined if trained therapists were more congruent with their patients’ experience of the alliance than untrained therapists, and whether congruence in alliance ratings in one session of therapy was associated with better outcomes in the following session. Forty community-based psychotherapists were randomly assigned to be trained to develop and maintain the alliance or to receive no training. Patients were 117 adults who were seen in their therapists’ community-based practices. Training focused on helping therapists to understand and be responsive to their own and their patient’s mental states (intentions, feelings, thoughts) to be better attuned to their patient’s experience of the therapeutic relationship. The training included workshops and ongoing case consultations to help the clinician to strengthen the therapeutic relationship with the use of mentalizing, attachment theory, countertransference management, and metacommunication. Therapeutic alliance and well-being outcomes were measured at each of six consecutive early psychotherapy sessions. The results indicated that compared to untrained therapists, trained therapists and their patients were significantly more congruent in their alliance ratings. Patient well-being outcomes improved in a session when trained therapists and their patients agreed in their positive alliance ratings in a previous session. This association was not significant among untrained therapists and their patients.
Practice Implications
This study suggests that therapists can be trained to be more attuned to their patients’ experience of the therapeutic relationship, and that this congruence may make the alliance a more potent change agent. Training may make therapists more sensitive to their patients’ experience of the alliance across sessions. Therapists should be particularly attentive to the state of the therapeutic alliance from session to session and to track their patients’ experience of the alliance using skills like mentalizing. The PPRNet has converted this training program into a virtual self-paced platform, and we will test this new format in a study starting in 2023. We encourage community-based clinicians to receive the free training by participating in this new study. For more information about the training and new study, email pprnet@uottawa.ca.
October 2022
Therapists Report Less Therapeutic Skill in Telepsychology vs In Person Therapy
Lin, T., Stone, S. J., Heckman, T. G., & Anderson, T. (2021). Zoom-in to zone-out: Therapists report less therapeutic skill in telepsychology versus face-to-face therapy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychotherapy, 58, 449–459.
The COVID-19 pandemic has confronted psychotherapists with several challenges including rapidly switching their practice to using teletherapy (videoconferencing, phone, and other virtual media). The use of teletherapy in clinical work increased from 7.1% prior to the pandemic to 85.5% during the pandemic. And estimates suggest that at least one-third of clinical work will be performed by teletherapy post-pandemic. Over a third of psychologists reported that they lacked training in using teletherapy, and they believe that their skills in this domain are inadequate. Therapists have raised a number of concerns in past surveys including issues related to privacy, professional self-doubt, technological competence, challenges to the therapeutic relationship, and problems with implementing some interventions. In this survey of 440 therapists and trainees, Lin and colleagues were particularly interested in therapists’ perceptions of the impact of teletherapy relative to in person therapy on the therapeutic process and patient outcomes. Videoconferencing was the most frequently used modality by 73.56% of surveyed therapists. The survey asked if three broad areas of practice were affected by teletherapy compared to in person therapy. These areas included common therapeutic factors (level of therapist empathy, emotional expression, warmth, alliance bond), extra-therapeutic patient factors (the patient’s environment that impacted their ability to engage in homework or use prescribed resources), and perceived patient outcomes (therapist ratings of patient symptom reduction, satisfaction, clinical improvement). Therapists in the survey were representative of the population of therapists in the US, and 82% of them provided all their clinical work in recent months by teletherapy. Compared to in person therapy, therapists reported poorer skills related to common therapeutic factors (d = 0.86), somewhat greater impact of extra-therapeutic factors (d = 0.36), and perceived poorer patient outcomes (d = 0.68) in teletherapy. Therapists who were younger, preferred emotion-focused or relational therapies, and with no prior training reported a relatively greater decrease in therapeutic skills in teletherapy compared to in-person therapy.
Practice Implications
By far, most therapists believed that providing psychotherapy by virtual means reduced their capacity to use common therapeutic stances including empathy, warmth, and the therapeutic alliance. Some of this might be affected by the psychological distance caused by the virtual format and difficulties with reading body language and other non-verbal cues. Therapists perceived that patient outcomes suffered as a result. This was particularly true for younger therapists, possibly because of the impact of adopting the new modality on their professional self-confidence. Also, therapists who preferred experiential or interpersonally based therapies felt particularly challenged possibly because these therapies may be more reliant on emotional communication and discerning patient interpersonal behaviors. Training and support are needed for therapists and trainees to improve their confidence in providing teletherapy.
Confidence in the Therapist and in Treatment
Finsrud, I., Nissen-Lie, H. A., Ulvenes, P., Melsom, L., Vrabel, K., & Wampold, B. (2022, September). Confidence in the therapist and confidence in the treatment predict symptomatic improvement week by week in therapy: A latent curve modeling approach. Journal of Counseling Psychology. Advance online publication.
In his classic book Persuasion and Healing, Jerome Frank suggested that all psychotherapies involve a trusting emotionally charged relationship with a sanctioned healer who has a good rationale for their interventions. The common factors approach to psychotherapy was born from this kind of thinking. Carl Rogers, for example, argued that to be effective therapists had to engage in unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding, and a genuine non-defensive stance. Contemporary therapeutic alliance theory emphasizes similar factors plus the patient’s expectation of benefit from therapy created through accepting the rationale for the therapy and agreement on the tasks and goals of therapy. From this research and theory, one can see that a patient’s confidence in the therapist and confidence in the treatment may be key common factors underlying effective therapies. Confidence in the therapist refers to a patient who believes that the therapist has the relational skills to help, and that the therapist is working in the patient’s best interest. Confidence in treatment refers to the patient’s belief that the rationale for treatment is meaningful, and that the treatment itself will remedy their problems. In this study, Finsrud and colleagues were interested in whether confidence in the therapist or treatment in one session predicted symptom reduction in the next session. Or was it the other way around – does symptom reduction increase a patient’s confidence? If the results showed the latter, then confidence is result of symptom improvement and so has little or no therapeutic value. The study had 587 adults receiving inpatient treatment for a variety of disorders and treated by psychotherapists of different orientations. Patients completed a measure of confidence in the therapist and treatment, and a scale of their depressive symptoms twice a week for an average of 12 weeks. The authors used sophisticated statistical modeling techniques to examine the effect of a patient’s preceding levels of confidence in therapist or treatment on the patient’s subsequent session symptoms, and vice versa. The researchers found that an increase in confidence in the therapist and confidence in the treatment predicted a decrease in symptoms in the next session. They also found that a reduction in symptoms predicted an increase in confidence in the therapist and in treatment in the next session.
Practice Implications
Patients’ confidence in the therapist and in the treatment both contribute to symptom reduction over and above early symptom change. In other words, the patient’s perception of the therapist as a person and their expectations that the treatment will be helpful are likely key factors that predict a reduction in symptoms. Therapists must have positive regard, genuineness, and empathy towards patients to facilitate the patients’ confidence in the therapist as a person. And therapists must provide a clear rationale for the treatment and develop a collaborative understanding with patients on how therapy will be done (agreement on the tasks) and what the desired outcomes will be (agreement on the goals).