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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...

Giorgio A. Tasca

…I blog about how the therapeutic alliance works, psychotherapy with Indigenous Peoples, and th efficacy of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology

Type of Research

Topics

November 2016

  • When Clients and Therapists Agree on Client Functioning

    Bar-Kalifa, E., Atzil-Slonim, D., Rafaeli, E., Peri, T., Rubel, J., & Lutz, W. (2016, October 24). Therapist–client agreement in assessments of clients’ functioning. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000157.

    There has been a lot of research in the past decade on progress monitoring (i.e., regularly providing reliable feedback to therapists on client outcomes, the alliance, and client functioning). This research indicates that client outcomes can be enhanced if therapists have ongoing information on how their client or the relationship is progressing. In this innovative research by Bar-Kalifa and colleagues, the authors studied 77 therapists who saw a total of 384 clients. The therapists were experienced at providing cognitive-behavioral therapy. Clients for the most part had a depressive or anxiety disorder and were seen for an average of 36 sessions. Client outcomes were measured pre- and post-treatment. Emotional and psychological functioning during the past week was rated by the client before each session, and the same measure was given to the therapist to rate their client at the end of each session. After therapists made their rating, they were given ongoing feedback (i.e., progress monitoring) about how their clients’ rated their own functioning during the past week. Did clients and therapists agree on level of client functioning, was this agreement stable over time, and was this agreement or disagreement related to client outcomes? The authors used sophisticated statistical modeling to separate the effects of client ratings of their functioning from therapists’ ratings, and to examine the impact of the changing relationship between therapist and client ratings over time on client outcomes. The authors found little difference in the level of client and therapist ratings of client functioning, and they found that therapists tended to be accurate (i.e., congruent with clients) in tracking client functioning over time. More importantly, the ability of therapists to accurately track client functioning from session to session was related to better client outcomes in terms of key symptoms of depression and anxiety.

    Practice Implications

    The ability of therapists to accurately track client functioning over time was related to better client outcomes. This means that therapists who were aware of their clients’ functioning through feedback methods were better equipped to help their clients. In particular, information about how client functioning was changing from session to session might have allowed therapists to take corrective action for clients who were not doing well from one session to another. This information might have allowed therapists to reconsider a treatment formulation for a particular client, for example. Therapists should be aware of how a client is doing at a particular session, but more importantly therapists should be sensitive to fluctuations in client functioning across sessions. This might be best achieved with ongoing progress monitoring.

October 2016

  • The Long Reach of Nurturing Family Environments

    Waldinger, R.J. & Schulz, M.S. (2016). The long reach of nurturing family environments: Links with midlife emotion-regulatory styles and late-life security in intimate relationships. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797616661556.

    Although, not a psychotherapy study, this research has important implications for psychological treatment of adults, including older adults. This research, drawn from the original Grant study, is extraordinary because the sample is from a 78-year long study of 81 men. The original cohort of over 200 men were first assessed as adolescents and young adults between 1939 and 1942. At that time, the original authors conducted intensive interviews of the adolescents` family experiences and current life situations. These men were re-interviewed in mid-life in the 1960s (aged between 45 and 50 years), which included interviews and assessments of challenges in relationships, work functioning, and physical health. Waldinger and Schulz recently re-interviewed these men and their current partner in late-life (aged between 75 and 85 years), with interviews focusing on their current partner relationship. Raters reviewed audio recordings and notes from all the interviews and coded for: (a) quality of family environment in childhood (distant, hostile vs cohesive, warm) - taken from the first interview; (b) style of regulating emotions (suppressive, maladaptive vs engaged, adaptive) – taken from the midlife interview; and (c) security of attachment with their current partner (secure, comforting vs insecure, anxious) – taken from the late-life interview. The authors found that more nurturing early family environments were significantly linked with late-life attachment security with a partner (r = .23, 95% CI = .01, .45), and early family environment was significantly related to midlife adaptive emotion regulation strategies (r = .29, 95% CI = .06, .50). Also, adaptive emotion regulation strategies in midlife were significantly correlated with greater late-life attachment security (r = .23, 95% CI = .05, .51). These are medium-sized correlations, but they are remarkable because they represent associations between variables that were assessed decades apart. Through a statistical mediation analysis, the authors also reported that adaptiveness of emotion-regulation strategies partially explained why positive childhood family environments may lead to late-life attachment security (accounting for 6% of the variance).

    Practice Implications

    This compelling study adds to the argument that early family environment shapes the way adults regulate their emotions, which in turn affects how they experience relationships in old age. More securely attached adults were better able to meet two challenges associated with aging: accepting vulnerability in depending on a partner, and accepting the responsibility of being depended upon by that partner. The early family environment indeed has a long reach. Psychotherapy directed at reducing the effects of childhood adversity takes on a heightened meaning in the context of these findings. Treatment for adults who struggle with the consequences of non-nurturing early environments should include improving emotion regulation strategies.

August 2016

  • Therapists Affect Patient Dropout and Deterioration

    Saxon, D., Barkham, M., Foster, A., & Parry, G. (2016). The contribution of therapist effects to patient dropout and deterioration in the psychological therapies. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy. Advanced online publication, DOI: 10.1002/cpp.2028.

    Outcomes for patients receiving psychotherapy are generally positive, but not always. For example, patients might drop out of therapy (i.e., unilaterally end therapy). In clinical trials, the average drop out rate is somewhere between 17% and 26% of patients. Also, patients might deteriorate during therapy (i.e., show a reliable negative change in symptoms from pre- to post-therapy).  On average, about 8.2% of patients show a reliable deterioration after therapy. In this large study from a practice-based research network in the UK, Saxon and colleagues were interested in estimating the effect that therapists had on patient drop out and deterioration. Therapist effects refer to differences between therapists and the effects of this difference on patient outcomes. The authors were also interested in whether therapist effects predicted negative outcomes after controlling for therapist case-mix (i.e., patient variables like severity of symptoms, risk of self harm). Their study included 85 therapists who treated more than 10,000 adult patients over a 10-year period. Each therapist saw between 30 and 468 patients at one of 14 sites in the UK. About half of patients had moderate to severe depressive symptoms, and/or moderate to severe anxiety symptoms prior to starting therapy. Outcomes were measured with a reliable and valid psychometric instrument at pre- and post-treatment. The proportion of patients who dropped out of therapy was 33.8%. Patients who dropped out attended an average of 2.8 sessions (SD = 1.91), whereas treatment completers attended an average of 6.1 sessions (SD = 2.68). About 23.5% of therapists had drop out rates that were significantly worse than average.  These below average therapists (n = 13) had 49% of their patients drop out, whereas above average therapists (n = 20) had only 12% of their patients drop out. Most patients who completed therapy improved (72.2%), but about 7.2% of patients deteriorated to some degree. The average therapist (i.e., 74% of therapists) had 4.6% of their patients who got worse, whereas below average therapists (i.e., 4.7% of therapists) had up to 14.9% of their patients who got worse. That is, almost 3 times as many patients deteriorated with below average therapists.

    Practice Implications

    We know from previous studies that the type and amount of therapist training or theoretical orientation are not predictive of patient outcomes. However, previous research does suggest that therapists’ lack of empathy, negative countertransference, over-use of transference interpretations, and disagreement with patients about therapy process was associated with negative outcomes. Patient safety concerns might necessitate below average therapists to be identified and provided with greater support, supervision, and training.

July 2016

  • Is it Feasible to Have a Nationally Funded Psychotherapy Service?

    Community and Mental Health Team, Health and Social Care Information Centre (2015). Psychological therapies; Annual report on the use of IAPT services: England 2014/15.

    There have been calls from mental health professional organizations and by the media to provide publicly funded psychotherapy in Canada. Rates of common mental disorders in Canada are high, such that about 20% of the population will personally experience a mental illness in their lifetime. In 1998, the estimated direct and indirect economic cost of mental illness in Canada was $7.9 billion (all figures are in Canadian dollars). Current estimates of costs to fund a public psychotherapy service in Canada may be about $1 billion to $2.8 billion – which far outweighs the cost. Most outpatient psychotherapy in Canada is provided by professionals in private practice who charge somewhere between $100 and $200 per session, costing Canadians nearly $1 billion per year. Some people are fortunate to have workplace insurance that covers some but not all of the costs, but most people in Canada do not have insurance and so they pay out of pocket or they go untreated. Research shows us that approximately 13 to 18 sessions are needed for 50% of clients to get better with psychotherapy. Which means that even with an insurance plan, many Canadians who need psychotherapy will find it to be a financial burden. Since 2008, the National Health Service in England implemented the Improving Access to Psychotherapies (IAPT) services to provide publicly funded psychotherapy to the population. The psychological treatments provided through IAPT are evidence-based (e.g., CBT, interpersonal psychotherapy, brief dynamic psychotherapy for depression). For mild to moderate problems, individuals get low intensity interventions first (i.e., self help, internet based interventions), followed by more intensive psychotherapy if needed. Treatment outcomes are measured from pre- to post-treatment with valid standardized measures of depression and anxiety. At post-treatment, patients are categorized as reliably deteriorated, not changed, improved, and recovered. The goal of the IAPT is to achieve 50% recovery rates among patients. In their online 2014-15 annual report, the IAPT service reported that it treated over 400,000 patients in that year. 44.8% of patients were rated as reliably recovered – that is over 180,000 mentally ill patients improved and no longer had a mental illness. Reliable improvement was seen in 60.8% of patients – this included recovered patients plus those who still had a disorder but were feeling significantly better than when they started. Recovery was highest for people 65 years and older (57.8%). Rates of recovery were similar for depression (44.6%) and anxiety (47.8%) disorders, and between men and women. Waiting times for treatment was less than 28 days for 66.0% of patients.

    Practice Implications

    The experience in England with the IAPT is instructive for Canada. The IAPT service provides evidence-based psychological therapies within a publicly funded national health service. The IAPT approached its target of 50% of patients recovering from mental illness, and over 60% of patients were reliably improved. Waiting times were low for most patients. Given the experience in England’s National Health Service, the implementation of a national strategy for psychotherapy appears to be feasible and effective. Will political leaders in Canada be able to see the financial and human value of publicly funded psychotherapy?

June 2016

  • Is Therapist Effectiveness a Stable Characteristic?

    Kraus, D. R., Bentley, J. H., Alexander, P. C., Boswell, J. F., Constantino, M. J., Baxter, E. E., & Castonguay, L. G. (2016). Predicting therapist effectiveness from their own practice-based evidence. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 84(6), 473-483.

    There is lots of evidence that there are differences between therapists in their patients’ outcomes. Some studies estimate that 5% to 7% of patient outcomes can be attributed to differences between therapists’ abilities and style of delivering treatment. But most of these studies measured outcomes only once, and so they could not estimate if therapist effects are stable across time. Further, many of these studies used only a global measure of patient distress as an outcome and did not measure domain-specific outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety, mania, alcohol dependence, etc.). In this study by Krauss and colleagues, 59 therapists who treated 3,540 patients were included. Therapists had on average 10 years of experience and were from a variety of professions (psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors etc.). The settings included mental health clinics, independent practice, hospitals, and others. The authors went to some effort to control for case-mix variables such as client problem difficulty, length of treatment, caseload size, and other variables. Client outcomes were measured for 12 different domains ranging from depression to sexual dysfunction to substance abuse. First, outcomes were assessed for 30 patients of each therapist, and then these were compared to outcomes of the same therapist’s next 30 patients. Therapists were classified as “exceptional”, “average”, or “below average” based on their patients’ outcomes. Fifty-seven percent of therapists who were rated as exceptional with the first 30 patients were likely to remain exceptional or above average with the next 30 patients. In other words, effective therapists tended to remain effective over time. Therapists had better patient outcomes when it came to depression, suicidality, and substance abuse, but therapists tended not to have as good outcomes when it came to mania, and sexual functioning.

    Practice Implications

    Effective therapists tend to remain effective over time for particular client problem areas. However, therapists are seldom effective for more than 4 or 5 client presenting problems, and less than 10 % of therapists are effective with all client problem areas. Therefore patients with differing problems are likely to achieve better or worse outcomes depending on the particular therapist and his or her strengths. Therapists can regularly assess patient outcomes and use that information to help with continuing education to improve their practice for a particular problem area.

  • Are Therapists Uniformly Effective Across Patient Outcomes?

    Nissen-Lie, H. A., Goldberg, S. B., Hoyt, W. T., Falkenström, F., Holmqvist, R., Nielsen, S. L., & Wampold, B. E. (2016). Are therapists uniformly effective across patient outcome domains? A study of therapist effectiveness in two different treatment contexts. Journal of Counseling Psychology. Advance online publication. 

    What characterizes more or less effective therapists? Are some therapists more effective for certain types of client mental health problems? In this study by Nissen-Lie and colleagues the authors look at whether therapists are skilled across patient problem domains. They conducted two studies with over 6000 patients and almost 200 therapists. Patients were assessed with common outcome measures of mental health domains that included: social functioning, work functioning, relationship functioning and symptom distress. Therapists included psychologists and social work professionals (70%) and trainees (30%) who saw at least 10 patients each. Theoretical orientations ranged from CBT, psychodynamic, and supportive psychotherapy. Patients were symptomatic at the start of therapy and primarily had problems with anxiety and depression. Patient symptoms on average improved so that psychotherapy had a moderate to large effect. Therapists did not differ in caseload mix regarding client severity. The authors reported that the client mental health domains (i.e., symptom severity, work functioning, social functioning, and interpersonal functioning) were relatively distinct or unrelated areas (i.e., the domains were largely uncorrelated). The authors then calculated change scores for each client domain area and used these change scores in a multilevel factor analysis. They wanted to see if a therapist’s clients achieved greater change in one client domain versus in another client domain. The results showed that if clients of a therapist changed in one domain (e.g., depression) then that outcome was highly related to change in another domain (e.g., interpersonal functioning). In other words, if a therapist was effective (or ineffective) in reducing client symptoms, then that therapist was also likely effective (or ineffective) in reducing, work, social, and relationship problems.

    Practice Implications

    The results support the notion of therapist uniformity in terms of client outcome domains. In other words effective therapists tend to be effective with many types of client problems (but perhaps not all client problems – see my blog this month of the Kraus et al. (2016) study). The authors argue that effective therapists have three key qualities: flexibility in adapting treatments to clients, sensitivity to differences between clients, and responsiveness to clients’ reactions to therapeutic interventions. That is, effective therapists are willing and able to self correct when required.

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