What can therapists learn from the CIA? Experts versus the "Wisdom of the Crowd"
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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Do you know who said, "Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t"?
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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How not to be among the 70-95% of practitioners and agencies that fail
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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Dumb and Dumber: Research and the Media
"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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Are you any good as a therapist? The Legacy of Paul W. Clement
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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Good News and Bad News about Psychotherapy
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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Did you know your clients can tell if you are happy?
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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Do you do psychotherapy?
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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What does Golf have to do with Feedback-Informed Treatment? Watch the video!
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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Excellence in Amsterdam: The 2013 ACE Conference
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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NIMH Dumps the DSM-5: The No News Big News
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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How Cool is Kuhl? A Man with Vision on a Mission
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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Evidence-based Practice is a Verb not a Noun
Evidence-based practice (EBP). What is it? Take a look at the graphic above. According to American Psychological Association and the Institute of Medicine, there are three components: (1) the best evidence; in combination with (2) individual clinical expertise; and consistent with (3) patient values and expectations. Said another way, ...
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The Revolution in Swedish Mental Health Services: UPDATE on the CBT Monopoly
No blogpost I've ever published received the amount of attention as the one on May 13th, 2012 detailing changes to Swedish Mental Health practice. At the time, I reported about research results showing that the massive investment of resources in training therapists in CBT had not translated into improved outcomes ...
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What to Pay Attention to in Therapy?
A week or so ago, I received an email from my friend, colleague, and mentor Joe Yeager. He runs a small listserve that sends out interesting and often provocative information. The email contained pictures from a new and, dare I say, ingenious advertising campaign for Colgate brand dental floss. Before ...
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Are Counseling and Psychotherapy a Con? The Gauntlet is Thrown in New Zealand
Earlier this summer, I was contacted by Donna Chisholm, editor of and reporter for Metro and North & South Magazines in New Zealand. She was doing a feature article on the effectiveness of psychological services. The State spent scads of money on treatment. Concerns had been raised by some that ...
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