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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.

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Giorgio A. Tasca

…I blog about client perspectives on psychotherapy failure, therapeutic alliance, and alliance ruptures and resolutions and symptom severity.

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September 2013

  • Some Therapists are Reliably Effective and a Few are Reliably Harmful

    Kraus, D. R., Castonguay, L., Boswell, J. F., Nordberg, S. S., & Hayes, J. A. (2011). Therapist effectiveness: Implications for accountability and patient care. Psychotherapy Research, 21, 267-276.

    Some patients benefit from psychotherapy, some do not, and a few get worse. Research has indicated that patient motivation, client-therapist match, and client characteristics might be associated with better or worse client outcomes. What about the contribution of the therapist? Do some therapists consistently have patients with better outcomes or with worse outcomes? Are consistently effective therapists effective for most patient problem areas or only some? Answers to these questions have important public health, funding, continuing education, and training implications. In a large study conducted in the U.S., Kraus and colleagues assessed 12 patient domains (sexual functioning, work functioning, violence, social functioning, anxiety, substance abuse, psychosis, quality of life, sleep, suicidality, depression, and mania) with a standardized reliable measure (the Treatment Outcome Package). The measure was used in a variety of public and private clinics and practices. Almost 700 therapists were sampled (including social workers 43%, mental health counsellors 35%, psychologists 10%, others 12%), with an average of 11 years experience. Ten cases were selected from each therapist caseload, so almost 7000 patients were included that received at least 16 sessions of therapy (16 sessions is an adequate dose for 50% of patients to improve – see my August, 2013 blog). The patients were, for the most part, representative of a typical caseload with regard to age, sex, and problem area as compared to previous national (U.S.) research. The authors used a reliable change index to classify patients as reliably improved, unchanged, or reliably worsened. The reliable change index is a way of assessing if change from session 1 to 16 on average exceeded the scale’s measurement error so that the change was considered reliable (i.e., not due to error). Reliable change for each therapist’s 10 patients was calculated so that a therapist could be classified as “effective” (i.e., on average their patients reliably improved), “ineffective” (i.e., on average their patients did not change), or “harmful” (i.e., on average their patients reliably worsened). The frequency of effective therapists ranged from a low of 29% in treating symptoms of sexual dysfunction to a high of 67% in treating symptoms of depression. Harmful therapists ranged from a low of 3% in treating depressive symptoms to a high of 16% in treating symptoms of substance abuse and violence. When looking at competency areas (i.e., areas of reliable effectiveness), the median number of areas of therapist competence was 5 out of 12 problem areas. Only 1 therapist of the approximately 700 therapists was competent in 11 of 12 domains, and none were competent in all 12 domains. Being effective in one domain was not correlated with effectiveness in another domain. So, one cannot infer that if a therapist was effective in treating depression he or she would also be effective in treating social dysfunction, for example.

    Practice Implications

    There was tremendous variability in therapist skill and areas of competence in this very large sample of therapists. Between 3% and 16% of therapists were classified as reliably harmful to their patients, and between 29% and 67% were reliably effective depending on the problem area they were treating. Therapists who were effective in one domain could be harmful in another. Most therapists had some areas in which they were consistently effective, usually around 5. However, as indicated by previous research, without routine measurement, therapists may not be aware of clients for whom they are consistently helpful or harmful. Routine monitoring of outcomes could guide the matching of client problems to therapists, and could direct therapists to areas for continuing education, training, or personal therapy.

    Author email: dkraus@bhealthlabs.com

August 2013

  • Helpful and Hindering Events in Psychotherapy

    Castonguay, L.G., Boswell, J.F., Zack, S., Baker, S., Boutselis, M., Chiswick, N., Damer, D., Hemmelstein, N., Jackson, J., Morford, M., Ragusea, S., Roper, G., Spayd, C., Weiszer, T., Borkovec, T.D., & Grosse Holtforth,, M. (2010). Helpful and hindering events in psychotherapy: A practice research network study. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, and Training, 47, 327-344.

    There are many reasons why I like this paper, and one reason is that it is a psychotherapy practice research network study (most of the co-authors are independent practice clinicians). This group of clinicians and researchers met on a number of occasions to define the research questions, including: “what do psychotherapists and clients find most and least helpful in a psychotherapy session?”; and “do psychotherapists and clients agree on what was most and least helpful?” The clinicians and researchers also discussed and agreed on the method for collecting and analysing the data. Thirteen independent practice clinicians participated (6 CBT, 4 psychodynamic, and 3 experiental/humanistic). For a period of 18 months, all new clients were invited to participate so that 121 clients with a variety of disorders enrolled in the study. Clients and therapists filled out (on an index card) parts of the Helpful Aspects of Therapy (HAT) measure, which asked them to report, describe, and rate particularly helpful and hindering events from the session they had just completed. For example clients and therapists were asked: “Did anything particularly helpful happen during this session?”; and “Did anything happen during this session which might have been hindering?” When participants answered “Yes” to either of these questions, they were asked to briefly describe the event(s), and then rate them on a scale from 1 to 4 for level of helpfulness or level of hindrance. Both clients and therapists did so at the end of every therapy session. Close to 1500 therapeutic events were recorded by the clients and therapists. The events were then coded and categorized according to type of event by independent raters using an established coding system. Clients rated self-awareness, problem clarification, and problem solution as the most helpful type of events, although self-awareness was significantly the most identified of all helpful events by clients. Therapists rated self-awareness, alliance strengthening, and problem clarification as the most helpful type of events. Therapists identified self-awareness and alliance strengthening significantly more often than any other helpful events. Hindering events were identified much less frequently by clients and therapists. Client identified poor fit (e.g., therapist tried something that didn’t fit the client’s experience) as the most frequent hindering event category. Therapists identified therapist omissions (i.e., failure to provide support or an intervention) as the most frequent hindering event category. Overall, with the exception of self-awareness, therapists and clients did not agree on what were the most helpful or hindering events in therapy.

    Practice Implications

    Results regarding self awareness indicate that providing clients with opportunities to achieve a clearer sense of their experience (e.g., emotions, behaviors, and perceptions of self) is frequently reported as beneficial by both clients and therapists. The events that therapists most frequently reported as detrimental were those in which they failed to be attuned to their clients’ needs. This may reflect therapists’ concerns with potential alliance ruptures. The overall lack of agreement between therapists and clients on helpful and hindering events raises the question about whether therapists are not aware enough of clients’ experiences, or whether clients are not knowledgeable about what is in fact therapeutic. Perhaps client and therapist ratings of events represent complementary perspectives on what works or does not work in psychotherapy. Regarding participating in research, these independent practice therapists reported that the procedure of writing down helpful and harmful events and reading what their clients wrote after each session had a positive impact on their practice. That is, the process of data collection became immediately relevant to their clinical work.

    Author email: lgc3@psu.edu

June 2013

  • Parallel Process in Psychotherapy Supervision

    Tracey, T. J., Bludworth, J., & Glidden-Tracey, C. E. (2011). Are there parallel processes in psychotherapy supervision? An empirical examination. Psychotherapy, 49(3), 330-343.

    Parallel process was first proposed in the psychodynamic literature as the replication of the therapeutic relationship in supervision. Parallel process is also recognized as an important aspect of supervision in developmental and interactional models of supervision, even though those models do not endorse the unconscious aspects of parallel process. Parallel processes in supervision occur when: (1) the trainee therapist brings the interaction pattern that occurs between the trainee therapist and client into supervision and enacts the same pattern but with the trainee therapist in the client’s role, or (2) the trainee therapist takes the interaction pattern in supervision back into the therapy session as the therapist, now enacting the supervisor’s role. For example, a client comes into therapy seeking guidance because things are not going well in his relationships. He desires structure and direction from the trainee therapist (client’s behaviour is submissive). The trainee therapist attempts to help the client by providing guidance (therapist’s behaviour is relatively dominant). The client then responds with “Yes, but…” to suggestions offered by the trainee therapist (client’s behaviour is non-affiliative). The trainee therapist over time starts to become subtly “critical” of the client (therapist matches the non-affiliative client behavior). The trainee therapist goes into supervision complaining about the client’s “resistence” and the trainee therapist asks for help and direction from the supervisor (trainee therapist increases his submissive behavior in a parallel enactment of the client’s submissive stance). As the supervisor provides some direction (supervisor increases her dominance), the trainee therapist responds with “Yes, but. . .” (trainee therapist increases his non-affiliative behavior). The supervisor engages in more “critical” comments than usual in response to the therapist (supervisor matches the non-affiliative trainee behavior). In this way, the supervision interaction becomes a relative replication of the therapy relationship, captured in the parallel amounts of dominance/submission and affiliation/non-affiliation exhibited by the participants in relation to each other. Tracey and colleagues (2012) studied this phenomenon by coding moment by moment interpersonal interactions using an interpersonal circumplex model (i.e. a model that assesses relative dominance and affiliation) among 17 triads of clients/trainee therapists/supervisors in a series of single case replications. The authors hypothesized that relative dominance and affiliation would be parallel between clients/trainee therapist pairs and corresponding trainee therapist/supervisor pairs in contiguous sessions. Significant results were found for each dyad within the 17 client/trainee therapist/supervisor triads. Therapists in the role of trainee altered their behavior away from their usual in supervision to act somewhat more like particular clients did in the previous therapy session. Supervisors tended to engage in complementary interpersonal responses in the subsequent supervision session. This provided evidence for parallel process at an interpersonal level of interactions. Further, positive client outcome was associated with increasing similarity of trainee therapist behavior to the supervisor over time on both dominance and affiliation. That is, the more therapists acted like their supervisors in the previous supervision meeting on both dominance and affiliation, the better the client outcome.

    Practice Implications

    This article provides intriguing evidence for an interpersonal model of parallel process. Supervisors may choose to communicate with the trainee about how the trainee therapist and client are interacting, as well as how the trainee and supervisor are interacting. In this way, the supervisor makes the implicit aspects of the parallel process more explicit for the trainee therapist. The trainee then can make choices about how best to proceed based on the new understanding of the interactional pattern at the process and content levels of interaction. For example, a therapist and supervisor can come to understand a block in the supervisory alliance as a parallel to a similar impediment in the trainee therapist-client relationship. A supervisor working through the block in supervision to create a more collegial and affiliative environment may model for the trainee therapist ways in which to effectively and collaboratively work with their client.

    Author email: Terence.Tracey@asu.edu

March 2013

  • What Are The Characteristics of More Effective Therapists?

    Laska, K. M., Smith, T. L., Wislocki, A. P., Minami, T., & Wampold, B. E. (2013). Uniformity of evidence-based treatments in practice? Therapist effects in the delivery of cognitive processing therapy for PTSD. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 60(1), 31-41.

    Some therapists are more effective than others. Why, and how can we improve therapist effectiveness? Previous researchers estimates that differences among therapists account for 8% of the outcome variance, which is as big or a bigger effect than differences between treatment types. Some argue that training and supervising therapists in evidence-based treatments (EBTs) can reduce differences between therapists. But if training in EBTs does not reduce differences, what are the therapist factors we should be focusing on to improve outcomes? A study by Laska and colleagues (2013) addresses some of these issues. In their study, 25 therapists (psychologists and social workers) in Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals were trained by a nationally recognized trainer in cognitive processing therapy (CPT) for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and they treated 192 veterans. Therapists were trained to a standard level of competence in CPT, and they were supervised weekly by a certified expert in CPT. Differences between therapists’ effectiveness accounted for 12% of the outcome variance. In other words training and supervision in CPT did not appear to reduce differences between therapists, so that some therapists remained significantly more (or less) effective than others. The CPT expert supervisor was able to identify the more effective therapists even though she was blind to patient outcomes. She was also asked to list the qualities of these more successful therapists. Four areas emerged from the qualitative analysis of the supervisor interviews. (1) Reducing Avoidance – i.e., therapists’ ability to skilfully address patient avoidance of difficult areas or avoidance of therapy assignments, and not to collude with client avoidance; (2) Language in Supervision – i.e., therapists’ willingness to discuss struggles with cases, openness to discussing their contribution to impasses, and non-defensiveness in response to supervisor feedback; (3) Flexible Interpersonal Style – i.e., therapists’ ability both to join with and to challenge patients, to flexibly apply the manual so that they did not miss important interpersonal events in the therapy, but at the same time not to stray too far from the manual; and (4) Strong Therapeutic Alliance –i.e., therapists’ genuineness with patients, ability to develop a bond, and to agree with patients on tasks and goals of therapy.

    Practice Implications

    Creating a culture within a practice setting in which therapists are routinely provided feedback about their clients’ ongoing progress and about the therapeutic relationship has the potential to improve patient care. Therapists’ ability to handle interpersonally challenging encounters with patients is what distinguishes the most competent therapists from others. Training and supervision of therapists should focus on facilitative interpersonal skills as well as on the specific treatment protocol.

    Author email: Kevin.Laska2@va.gov

  • Do Therapists Cry in Psychotherapy?

    Blume-Marcovici, A. C., Stolberg, R. A., & Khademi, M. (2013). Do therapists cry in therapy? The role of experience and other factors in therapists' tears. Psychotherapy. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/a0031384

    There is almost no research on therapists crying during psychotherapy, and on its correlates and impact. A survey of therapists’ ethical behavior conducted 25 years ago asked a single question about crying, and 56.5% of respondents indicated that they cried in the presence of a client. By contrast there are several such surveys in medicine. Notably, a study of medical students and interns found that 68% medical students and 74% of medical interns had cried with patients. A recent survey by Blume-Marcovici and colleagues is the first of its kind since it was devoted to therapists crying in therapy and associated factors. They defined crying as: “tears in one’s eyes due to emotional reasons”. The authors surveyed U.S. psychologists and had 541 respondents. The sample included 59% graduate students, and 41% licensed clinicians who had an average of 9.6 years experience. Seventy six percent were women, mean age was 36 years, 35% had a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) orientation, and 33% had some psychodynamic orientation (PDT). Respondents reported that 72% had cried in therapy. Those who cried reported crying in 6.6% of their sessions in the past 4 weeks. There were no differences between men and women, and there was no association between therapist crying and therapist personality traits or level of empathy. Therapists who cried more often in their daily life tended to cry more in therapy. PDT and CBT therapists did not differ in the amount they cried in their daily lives, however PDT therapists (88.9%) reported crying more often than CBT therapists (50.1%) in therapy. Further, older and more experienced therapists reported crying more often in therapy in the past month than younger and less experienced therapists. It is possible that older therapists may become more comfortable in using their clinical judgment, and so have fewer restrictions on their own affective displays. Of therapists who cried, 45.7% felt that the therapeutic relationship improved, and 1% reported that the relationship deteriorated due to crying. Patients, however, were not surveyed for their opinion about their therapist’s crying.

    Practice Implication

    Crying among therapists may happen relatively frequently. Although this study is novel, it is the only one of its kind so one should be cautious about drawing practice implication. The challenge of therapists crying in therapy is that it can bend or break the therapeutic frame (e.g., is the therapist crying because of being overwhelmed and acting on his or her own needs, or is the therapist genuinely responding for and with the patient?). The survey suggests that therapist crying can strengthen the therapeutic relationship. This is more likely true when the therapist is attuned to the patient’s needs, and when the crying signals a moment of positive emotional connection in the midst of painful feelings in the client. As with any event in therapy, a genuine and skilful exploration by the therapist and patient of the therapist’s crying has the potential to strengthen the relationship.

    Author email: ablume@alliant.edu

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