Actually, it’s more accurate to say, “Everything is new!”  The International Center for Clinical Excellence is coming up on its fifth birthday!   Since its launch in 2010, the ICCE has become the largest, online community of behavioral health practitioners and researchers in the world.  To celebrate, we are launching ...
Read More

Medication adherence is a BIG problem.  According to recent research, nearly one-third of the prescriptions written are never filled.  Other data document that more than 60% of people who actually go the pharmacy and get the drug, do not take it as prescribed. What's the problem, you may ask?  ...
Read More

Honestly, I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before.  It's not the first time it happened.  Last week, the ICCE held the "Training of Trainers" and "FIT Implementation" intensive trainings in Chicago, Illinois (USA).  Participants came from all around the world--from the northern-most parts of Alaska to the ...
Read More

In June, I spent several days in the air traveling to and from Perth, Australia for a conference.  Too tired to read anymore, I turned on the video system and began watching a program from the Discovery Channel about the North American red fox.  The furry little creatures were shown hunting rodents ...
Read More

Back in April, I blogged about an article that appeared in The Guardian, one of the U.K.'s largest daily newspapers.  Citing a single study published in Denmark, the authors boldly asserted, "The claim that all forms of psychotherapy are winners has been dealt a blow."  Sure enough, that one ...
Read More

The results are not encouraging.  A recent meta-analysis found that public attitudes toward psychotherapy have become progressively more negative over the last 40 years.  The impact on practitioners is staggering.  Between 1997 and 2007, use of psychotherapy declined by 35%.  Not surprisingly, clinicians' incomes also suffered, dropping 15-20% over the last decade ...
Read More

How valuable is clinical supervision to you?  In their massive, long-term international study of therapist development, researchers Orlinsky and Rønnestad (2005) found that "practitioners at all experience levels, theoretical orientations, professions, and nationalities report that supervised client experience is highly important for their current and career development" (p. 188). Despite the ...
Read More

Last week, an article appeared in The Guardian, one of the U.K.'s largest daily newspapers.  "Counselling and Therapy can be Harmful," the headline boldly asserted, citing results of a study yet to be published.  It certainly got my attention. Do some people in therapy get worse?  The answer is, ...
Read More

"What's in a name?" --William Shakespeare A little over a week ago, I received an email from Anna Graham Anderson, a graduate student in psychology at Aarhus University in Denmark.  "I'm writing," she said, "in hopes of receiving some clarifications." Anna Graham Anderson Without reading any further, I knew ...
Read More

What can we therapists learn from the CIA?  In a phrase, "When it comes to making predictions about important future events, don't rely on experts!" After a spate of embarrassing, high-profile intelligence failures, a recent story showed how a relatively small group of average people made better predictions about critical world events than highly-trained ...
Read More

Chief Dan George playing the role of Old Lodge Skins in the 1970 movie, "Little Big Man."  Whether or not you've seen or remember the film, if you're a practicing therapist, you know the wisdom contained in that quote.  No matter how skilled the clinician or devoted the client, "sometimes therapy works, sometimes ...
Read More

Our field is full of good ideas, strategies that work.  Each year, practitioners and agencies devote considerable time and resources to staying current with new developments.  What does the research say about such efforts?  When it comes to the implementation of new, evidence-based practices, traditional training strategies routinely produce only 5% to 30% success rates.  ...
Read More

"Just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!" - Harry in Dumb & Dumber On January 25th, my inbox began filling with emails from friends and fellow researchers around the globe.  "Have you seen the article in ...
Read More

Twenty years ago, I came across an article published in the journal, Professional Psychology.  It was written by a psychologist in private practice, Paul Clement.  The piece caught my eye for a number of reasons.  First, although we'd never met, Paul lived and worked in a town near my childhood home: ...
Read More

Have you seen this month's issue of, "The National Psychologist?"  If you do counseling or psychotherapy, you should read it.  The headline screams, "Therapy: No Improvement for 40 Years."  And while I did not know the article would be published, I was not surprised by the title nor it's ...
Read More

It's true.  Adding to a growing literature showing that the person of the therapist is more important than theoretical orientation, years of experience, or discipline, a new study documents that clients are sensitive to the quality of their therapist's life outside of treament.  In short, they can tell when you are happy ...
Read More