What is it that makes some therapists so much more effective than others, even when they are delivering the same evidence-based treatment? This instructive book identifies specific interpersonal skills and attitudes--often overlooked in clinical training--that facilitate better client outcomes across a broad range of treatment methods and contexts. Reviewing 70 years of psychotherapy research, the preeminent authors show that empathy, acceptance, warmth, focus, and other characteristics of effective therapists are both measurable and teachable. Richly illustrated with annotated sample dialogues, the book gives practitioners and students a blueprint for learning, practicing, and self-monitoring these crucial clinical skills.
What is it that makes some therapists so much more effective than others, even when they are delivering the same evidence-based treatment? This instructive book identifies specific interpersonal skills and attitudes--often overlooked in clinical training--that facilitate better client outcomes across a broad range of treatment methods and contexts. Reviewing 70 years of psychotherapy research, the preeminent authors show that empathy, acceptance, warmth, focus, and other characteristics of effective therapists are both measurable and teachable. Richly illustrated with annotated sample dialogues, the book gives practitioners and students a blueprint for learning, practicing, and self-monitoring these crucial clinical skills.
What is it that makes some therapists so much more effective than others, even when they are delivering the same evidence-based treatment? This instructive book identifies specific interpersonal skills and attitudes--often overlooked in clinical training--that facilitate better client outcomes across a broad range of treatment methods and contexts. Reviewing 70 years of psychotherapy research, the preeminent authors show that empathy, acceptance, warmth, focus, and other characteristics of effective therapists are both measurable and teachable. Richly illustrated with annotated sample dialogues, the book gives practitioners and students a blueprint for learning, practicing, and self-monitoring these crucial clinical skills.
The field of counseling and psychotherapy has for years presented the puzzling spectacle of unabating enthusiasm for forms of treatment whose effectiveness cannot be objectively demonstrated. With few exceptions, statistical studies have consistently failed to show that any form of psychotherapy is followed by significantly more improvement than would be caused by the mere passage of an equivalent period of time. Despite this, practitioners of various psychotherapeutic schools have remained firmly convinced that their methods are effective. Many recipients of these forms of treatment also believe that they are being helped. The series of investigations reported in this impressive book resolve this paradoxical state of affairs. The investigators have overcome two major obstacles to progress in the past--lack of agreement on measures of improvement and difficulty of measuring active ingredients of the psychotherapy relationship. The inability of therapists of different theoretical persuasions to agree on criteria of improvement has made comparison of the results of different forms of treatment nearly impossible. The authors have solved this intractable problem by using a wide range of improvement measures and showing that, regardless of measures used in different studies, a significantly higher proportion of results favor their hypothesis than disregard it. Overall, this book represented a major advance at the time of its original publication and is of continuing importance. The research findings resolve some of the most stubborn research problems in psychotherapy, and the training program based on them points the way toward overcoming the shortage of psychotherapists.
This text explores how psychotherapists can use deliberate practice to improve their clinical effectiveness. By sourcing through decades of research on how experts in diverse fields achieve skill mastery, the author proposes it is possible for any therapist to dramatically improve their effectiveness. However, achieving expertise isn’t easy. To improve, therapists must focus on clinical challenges and reconsider century-old methods of clinical training from the ground up. This volume presents a step-by-step program to engage readers in deliberate practice to improve clinical effectiveness across the therapists’ entire career span, from beginning training for graduate students to continuing education for licensed and advanced clinicians.
In Psychotherapy Is Worth It: A Comprehensive Review of Its Cost-Effectiveness, edited by Susan G. Lazar, M.D., and co-authored with members of the Committee on Psychotherapy of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, surveys the medical, psychiatric and psychological literature from 1984 to 2007 that is relevant to the cost-effectiveness of all kinds of psychotherapy. The volume explores the cost of providing psychotherapy in relation to its impact both on health and on the costs to society of psychiatric illness and related conditions. Written for psychotherapists, psychiatric benefit providers, policy makers, and others interested in the cost-effectiveness of providing psychotherapeutic treatments, this book analyzes the burden of mental illness, particularly in the United States, and the enormous associated costs to society that constitute a chronic, insufficiently recognized crisis in the health of our nation. The authors point out that in the United States nearly 30% of the population over the age of 18 has a diagnosable psychiatric disorder and yet only about 33% of those treated receive minimally adequate care. In fact, most people with mental disorders in the United States remain untreated or poorly treated, leading to loss in productivity, higher rates of absenteeism, increased costs, morbidity and mortality from medical illnesses, and loss of life through suicide. This book provides a systematic and comprehensive review of 25 years of medical literature on the cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy and discusses the: Epidemiology of mental illness, including prevalence and treatment rates Misconceptions and stigmas associated with psychiatric illness and the provision of psychotherapy and how they affect those most in need of care Cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy for the major psychiatric disorders as well as savings that psychotherapy can yield in increased health, work productivity, lives saved, and medical and hospital related costs For instance, in a review of 18 studies conducted from 1984 to 1994, psychotherapy was found to be cost-effective in treating patients with severe disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder, and led to improved work functioning and decreased hospitalization. Likewise, studies point to the enhancement of outcomes when psychotherapy is used in conjunction with medical therapies in the treatment of cancer, heart disease, and other prevalent, chronic diseases. Psychotherapy Is Worth It: A Comprehensive Review of Its Cost-Effectiveness concludes that studies confirm psychotherapy works for many conditions, is cost-effective, and is not over-used by those persons not truly in need. A treatment that is cost-effective is not "cheap"; rather, it can provide effective medical help at a cost acceptable to society, in comparison both to other effective treatments for the same condition and to medical treatments for other classes of mental disorder.
A practical, hands-on workbook, Becoming an Effective Supervisor neatly fills the gap in supervision resources available to mental health practitioners. The workbook is designed to help clinical counselors and therapists create effective supervision programs of their own, and to address the individual needs of their students. The leading contemporary models of supervision are discussed, as well as the necessary components of a successful supervision curriculum. A framework is then provided for counselors and therapists to develop a personalized and highly effective supervisory style to implement with their own students. The unique exploration exercises in each chapter allow readers to actively integrate the information provided, and to apply these lessons and skills to their own supervisory experiences. Students too will benefit from her concise examination of the theories, applications, and goals of the supervision process. Along with a discussion of the ethical, legal, and multicultural issues faced by clinical supervisors, practical analyses and applications ensure that this book will be a valued addition to any clinical counseling or therapy library.
Making Psychotherapy More Effective with Unconscious Process Work is an essential text that seeks to educate readers on the astounding capabilities of unconscious intelligence to both gather information and engage in rapid cognition. By providing a comprehensive and easily understood overview of the recent research on unconscious processes, as well as clinical case material, this book provides readers with skills that will enable them to strategically engage these resources. The first part of the book discusses the research-based principles that frame this growth-oriented approach towards psychotherapy. New discoveries about the surprising limitations of conscious self-governance force readers to reconsider the overall aim of psychotherapy. The second part explores several transtheoretical techniques, focusing on prediction, reimagining, mental contrasting, and incubated cognition. Case examples and key point summaries are used throughout, with the last chapter featuring reflective exercises. This book is essential reading for practicing psychotherapists, Ericksonian therapists, graduate students, and professors of psychotherapy.
This book identifies which characteristics make therapists more or less effective in their work and proposes guidelines to improve their effectiveness.
Neuropsychotherapy is intended to inspire further development and continual empirical updating of consistency theory. It is essential for psychotherapists, psychotherapy researchers, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and mental-health professionals. Profoundly important and innovative, this volume provides necessary know-how for professionals as it connects the findings of modern neuroscience to the insights of psychotherapy. Throughout the book, a new picture unfolds of the empirical grounds of effective psychotherapeutic work. Author Klaus Grawe articulates a comprehensive model of psychological functioning-consistency theory-and bridges the gap between the neurosciences and the understanding of psychological disorders and their treatment. Neuropsychotherapy illustrates that psychotherapy can be even more effective when it is grounded in a neuroscientific approach. Cutting across disciplines that are characteristically disparate, the book identifies the neural foundations of various disorders, suggests specific psychotherapeutic conclusions, and makes neuroscientific knowledge more accessible to psychotherapists. The book's discussion of consistency theory reveals the model is firmly connected to other psychological theoretical approaches, from control theory to cognitive-behavioral models to basic need theories.