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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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"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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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.  ...
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"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 ...
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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: ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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You know psychotherapy works. Forty years of research evidence backs up your faith in the process. And yet, fewer and fewer people are seeking out the services of professionals. Between 1998 and 2007, psychotherapy use decreased by 35%. People still sought help, they just went elsewhere to get it. For ...
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Summer is finally here.  The snow and rain has been replaced by warm, humid days here in Chicago.  The team at ICCE is awaiting the arrival of practitioners from all around the world to participate in the FIT Supervision Intensive training scheduled for August 6-9th.  We have a full ...
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My how time flies!  Nearly three weeks have passed since hundreds of clinicians, researchers, and educators met in Amsterdam, Holland for the 2013 "Achieving Clinical Excellence."  Participants came from around the globe--Holland, the US, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Romania, Australia, France--for three days of presentations on improving ...
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Almost a year ago, I blogged about results from field trials of the soon-to-be-released, fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Turns out, many of the diagnoses in the “new and improved” version were simply unreliable.  In fact, the likelihood of two clinicians, applying the ...
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This week, my colleague and friend, Dr. David Mee-Lee, sent me a link to a blogpost written by Don Kuhl.  Actually, I was already a subscriber to Don's Minful MIDweek blog (you should be too), but my travel this week had prevented me from reading his latest installment.  His posts always leave ...
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