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 psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder, capacity to metnalize and therapy resistant depression, and negative effects of 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
August 2022
Brief Online DBT Was Not Effective to Reduce Self Harm
Self-harm or non-suicidal self-injury is a significant problem that might affect 6% of the population seeking medical attention. And so, health systems are considering ways of scaling up treatments to reduce incidences of self-harm behaviors. Previous research showed that traditionally delivered dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) may reduce the incidence of suicide attempts. In this very large study of over 18,000 patients, Simon and colleagues tested whether two low intensity (and therefore low cost) outreach programs in addition to usual care provided to outpatients could reduce self-harm. Patients who reported suicidal thoughts in the past two weeks from several large health systems in the U.S. were randomly assigned to receive (1) care as usual, or (2) care management which included regular messages to motivate patients to follow-up with usual care, or (3) an interactive online program based on DBT supported by a skills coach that focused on mindfulness, current emotions, opposite action, and paced breathing. Both care management and the DBT based online program were in addition to usual care. The main outcome was fatal or non-fatal self-harm within 18 months. The results indicated that 3.10% of those who only received usual care experienced self-harm, 3.27% of those who received care management experienced self-harm, and 3.98% of those who received the online DBT based skills program experienced self-harm. A statistical comparison found a significantly higher risk of self-harm in the DBT based skills training group compared to usual care alone (hazard ratio, 1.29; 97.5% CI, 1.02-1.64; p = .015). When the authors looked at uptake or participation in the programs over a 9-month period, 17% of those who were offered usual care remained engaged in the program but only 2% of those offered the DBT based skills program remained engaged.
Practice Implications
This study is unusual in a couple of ways. First, it is very large and so it provides reliable findings that represent what might occur in actual practice. Second, the study reports a negative finding for a psychological intervention. The study indicates that trying to scale up a self-harm prevention program by providing it online even with live coaching resulted in significantly poorer outcomes than only usual care. Very few people (only 2%) continued with the online program after starting it. These results are similar to findings from previous research of online delivered therapy in which many people start but do not continue with such programs. Very few those who need mental health care want to interact with a program, and outcomes of such programs are modest at best.
Is Psychotherapy Equally Effective Across Age Groups? Rethinking therapy for children and adolescents.
There are now hundreds of controlled studies showing the efficacy of psychotherapy for depression. Most of these studies have focused on specific age groups, so that psychotherapies were tested for children, adolescents, adults, and older adults separately. Few studies have looked at whether psychotherapy has different effects across age groups. This information might be important because it may indicate that some therapies might have to be altered or specifically designed for the age group. In this meta-analysis, Cuijpers and colleagues collected all randomized controlled trials of psychotherapy vs no treatment, usual care, or some other control group for depression across age groups. They found 366 studies representing over 36,000 patients. The studies included those of children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged adults, older adults, and older old adults. The overall effect size across all age groups was g = 0.75 (95% CI, 0.67-0.82) suggesting a moderate effect of psychotherapy for depressive symptoms at post-treatment. The effect size for children was the lowest (g = 0.35, 95% CI: 0.15-0.55, k = 15), and the effect size for adolescents (g = 0.55, 95% CI: 0.34-0.75, k = 28) was also low. Effects for middle-aged adults (g = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.67-0.87, k = 304), older adults (g = 0.66, 95% CI: 0.51-0.82, k = 69), and older old adults (g = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.42-1.52, k = 10) were not significantly different. Young adults consistently had significantly better outcomes (g = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.79-1.16) than the other age groups except when compared to older old adults.
Practice Implications
It is possible that psychotherapies for depression as currently tested in the research literature are less effective for children and youth. This may be because the treatments that are most often used with children and adolescents are age adapted versions of therapy originally designed for adults. Psychotherapy for children and adolescents are affected by parental and family characteristics, and that these contexts may not be adequately accounted for by the therapies as currently tested and practiced. In any case, this meta-analysis suggests that current therapies for childhood and adolescent depression may need to be reconsidered given their relatively lower effects.
July 2022
Are Humanistic Psychotherapies Effective?
Elliot, R., Watson, J., Timulak, L., & Sharbanee, J. (2021). Research on humanistic-experiential psychotherapies: Updated review. In Barkham, W., Lutz, and L.G. Castonguay (Eds.) Bergin and Garfield's Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (7th ed.). Wiley. Chapter 13.
Humanistic or experiential psychotherapies have a long history going back to the work of Carl Rogers and Fritz Pearls in the 1960s. This is a broad umbrella of therapies that include person-centred therapy, gestalt, emotion-focused, psychodrama, and existential therapies. Most of these therapies see the therapeutic relationship as central and curative. The therapist tries to enter the client’s subjective world with empathy to understand the client’s experience and to provide a validating and corrective emotional experience. The goals of humanistic-experiential therapy include self-awareness, personal growth, and meaning-making in clients’ lives. In this chapter, Elliott and colleagues review and update the meta-analytic evidence for the effectiveness and efficacy of humanistic-experiential therapy. The uncontrolled pre- to post-treatment change from receiving humanistic-experiential therapy estimated from 97 studies was .86 (k = 94; 95% CI [.74, .97]), representing a large effect. Clients maintained their immediate post-treatment gains during the year following therapy (ESw = .88; k = 41; 95% CI [.67, 1.1]) and beyond (ESw = .92; k = 15; 95% CI [.52, 1.31]). Compared to no-treatment control groups in 15 randomized studies, humanistic-experiential therapy showed a large pre-post effect ESwc= .98 (95% CI [.55, 1.20]). Compared to all other therapies in 56 randomized trials, humanistic-experiential therapy produced equivalent outcomes, (ESwc = –.07; 95% CI [–.21, .07]). The outcomes compared specifically to CBT in which only bona-fide humanistic-experiential therapies were included (i.e., only studies in which the humanistic-experiential therapies were meant to be effective) also indicated a non-significant difference, (ES = –.15; k = 9; 95% CI [–.27, .03]).
Practice Implications
Dating back to the work of Carl Rogers, humanistic-experiential therapies have had an important impact on how many types of therapy is offered today. The emphasis of many therapies on empathy, the therapeutic relationship, and corrective emotional experience are hallmarks of humanistic-experiential therapies. The results of these updated meta-analyses indicate that humanistic-experiential therapies are effective in the short and longer term and are as effective as other forms of well-research psychotherapies.
April 2022
Countertransference and its Management
Constantino, M.J., Boswell, J.F., & Coyne, A.E. (2021). Patient, therapist, and relational factors. In Barkham, W. Lutz, and L.G. Castonguay (Eds.) Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (7th ed.). Wiley. Chapter 7.
Countertransference is one of the oldest concepts in psychotherapy dating back more than 100 years. More recently, some writers view countertransference as a pantheoretical concept, in other words it affects all therapists and occurring in all therapies. One definition of countertransference is that it is the “internal and external reactions in which unresolved conflicts of the therapist, usually but not always unconscious, are implicated”. Countertransference may provide important information about a patient’s interpersonal patterns, but it may also be an impediment to the therapist’s effectiveness. One prominent model of countertransference identifies its component parts to include: origins within the therapist (i.e., unresolved issues within the therapist that may interact with patient qualities); triggers caused by the patient’s transference (i.e., patient maladaptive interpersonal patterns) and other patient behaviors that may interact with the therapist’s unresolved issues; manifestations – or how the countertransference affects the therapist’s behaviors and responses toward the patient; the effects of these behaviors on the therapeutic relationship or the patient; and the therapist’s management of countertransference responses – or what the therapist does to maintain an equilibrium. In this part of the chapter, Constantino and colleagues review two meta-analyses of the impact of countertransference and its management on the patient. A meta-analysis of 14 studies indicated a small but significant correlation between therapist countertransference and poor patient outcomes (r = -0.16), and a second meta-analysis of 9 studies indicated a moderate and significant association between successful countertransference management and patient improvement (r = 0.39).
Practice Implications
Despite countertransference being a well-established topic in psychotherapy, the research is relatively new. The findings suggest that regardless of what type of therapy is practiced, therapists should be mindful of their countertransference reactions. It is important for therapists to monitor their internal mental and emotional states during a therapy session, and to note when they feel something that is not typical for them (bored, annoyed, attracted, overwhelmed, disgusted, distracted). A therapist’s management of these feelings may include remaining calm in the moment, self-reflection about the origins and triggers of their reactions, seeking consultation with a trusted colleague, and personal therapy to work on unresolved issue
Therapist Flexibility and Responsiveness
Constantino, M.J., Boswell, J.F., & Coyne, A.E. (2021). Patient, therapist, and relational factors. In Barkham, W. Lutz, and L.G. Castonguay (Eds.) Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (7th ed.). Wiley. Chapter 7.
One of the most intriguing findings from psychotherapy research is that adherence or competence to manual-prescribed techniques has almost no impact on patient mental health outcomes. That means that efforts to get therapists to follow a manual has no bearing on whether their patients get better. In fact, there is sufficient research to suggest that rigid adherence to a treatment model may be harmful to patients. Research suggests that purposefully moving away from protocols at times in therapy can be more validating, collaborative, and autonomy granting that sticking with the protocol. Thus, the over-zealous delivery of a treatment, despite good intentions, can be ineffective or harmful to patients. Some of the specific research in this area found that the patients of therapists who varied in their use of theory-prescribed interventions had better outcomes. Similarly, when psychodynamic therapists integrated cognitive and behavioral interventions, patients had better outcomes than when the therapists were less flexible. A similar concept to flexibility is therapist responsiveness, or their ability to respond to the specific therapeutic context. This might include therapists’ ability to develop a case formulation specific to the patient, and flexibly tailoring their interventions to that formulation. Therapist responsiveness and tailoring interventions to the patient may result in better outcomes.
Practice Implications
That the level of adherence to treatment manuals bears no relation to patient outcomes speaks to the speaks to problems associated with persistent and rigid adherence. Rigidity in applying a treatment model may lead to negative processes in therapy and poor patient outcomes. It is important for therapists to be responsive and attuned to their patients’ needs, progress, and treatment goals. That is, it likely more important to tailor treatment to the patient and their characteristics rather than trying to get the patient to adapt to the treatment.
Multicultural Competence and Orientation
Constantino, M.J., Boswell, J.F., & Coyne, A.E. (2021). Patient, therapist, and relational factors. In Barkham, W. Lutz, and L.G. Castonguay (Eds.) Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (7th ed.). Wiley. Chapter 7.
Therapist multicultural competence is a commitment to increasing one’s knowledge of patient’s cultural background, tailoring interventions to a patient’s culture, and understanding the impact of one’s own cultural background. Multicultural competence research has looked at its impact on clinical interactions. In a meta-analysis of 15 studies, therapist multicultural competence was associated with lower levels of patient drop-out from therapy (r = 0.26) and with greater patient improvement (r = 0.24). An interesting finding of these meta-analyses is that whereas patient ratings of a therapist’s multicultural competence was significantly associated with better patient outcomes (r = 0.38), therapist ratings of their own multicultural competence was not significantly associated with outcomes (r = 0.06). In other words, if one is interested in a therapist’s multicultural competence then one should ask the patient, not the therapist. A related but broader concept is multicultural orientation. The multicultural orientation framework is not so much a theoretical approach but a “way of being” for a therapist. The three aspects of multicultural orientation include cultural humility (in which a therapist takes an open and curious stance towards the patient’s identities), cultural opportunities (in which the therapist actively explores a patient’s cultural beliefs and values), and cultural comfort (or the extent to which a therapist feels at ease working with cultural dynamics). A systematic review of multicultural orientation theory identified 9 articles that found that therapist cultural humility was associated with better therapeutic alliances, fewer in-session microaggressions, and greater patient improvement.
Practice Implications
The research on multicultural competence suggest that therapists should regularly assess a patient’s cultural identities for adapting the therapeutic approach. This assessment should focus on the patient’s, not the therapist’s, evaluation of the therapist’s multicultural competence. It is also important for therapists to build their knowledge of specific cultural groups when tailoring their treatments. Regarding a multicultural orientation, it appears that a therapist’s cultural humility is critically important. That is a therapist who is open, non-defensive, and curious regarding a patient’s identities will be most helpful to patients of various cultures.