Greetings from beautiful Melbourne, Australia!   For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be traveling the up and down the east coast of this captivating country, conducting workshops and providing consultations on feedback-informed clinical work. Actually, I’ve had the privilege of visiting and teaching in Australia about once a year beginning ...
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I've just returned from a week in Denmark providing training for two important groups.  On Wednesday and Thursday, I worked with close to 100 mental health professionals presenting the latest information on "What Works" in Therapy at the Kulturkuset in downtown Copenhagen.  On Friday, I worked with a small group ...
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For the last 7 years, I've been traveling to the small, picturesque village of Brattleboro, Vermont to work with clinicians, agency managers, and various state officials on integrating outcomes into behavioral health services.  Peter Albert, the director of Governmental Affairs and PrimariLink at the Brattleboro Retreat, has tirelessly crisscrossed the state, promoting ...
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Early last summer, I received an email from my long time friend and colleague Don Meichenbaum alerting me to an article published in the April 2009 edition of the Behavior Therapist--the official "newsletter" of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies--critical of the work that I and others have done on ...
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Ohio is experiencing the same challenges faced by other states when it comes to behavioral health services: staff and financial cutbacks, increasing oversight and regulation, rising caseloads, unrelenting paperwork, and demands for accountability.  Into the breach, the Ohio Council of Behavioral Health & Family Service Providers organized their 30th annual ...
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I have in my hand a frayed and yellowed copy of observations once made by a well known trainer of horses. The trainer’s simple message for leading a productive and successful professional life was, “If the horse you’re riding dies, get off.” You would think the advice straightforward enough for all ...
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A few weeks ago, I announced the first International “Achieving Clinical Excellence” (ACE) conference to be held at the Westin Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri on October 20-22nd, 2010.  You can now register for this and all other ICCE events, by clicking here.  Through a variety of keynote addresses and workshops, participants ...
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If you've been following me on Twitter, then you know that last week I was touring and teaching in different spots around Europe.  First, I presented two days in Copenhagen.  Then I keynoted the British Association of Counseling and Psychotherapy Conference in Newcastle, England.  Early Saturday morning, I flew from London to ...
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There is an old (but in many ways sad) joke about two clinicians--actually, the way I first heard the story, it was two psychiatrists.  The point of the story is the same regardless of the discipline of the provider.  Anyway, two therapists meet in the hallway after a long day spent meeting ...
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On August 25th, right here on the "Top Performance" blog, I announced the formation of the International Center for Clinical Excellence.  As anyone who has been reading my recent posts or publication knows, my work is evolving; specifically, putting prior research on the common factors, measurement of outcome and alliance, and ...
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Greg Neimeyer, Ph.D., is causing quite a stir in continuing education circles.  What has he done?  In several scholarly publications, he's reviewed the existing empirical literature and found that continuing professional education in heavioral health is not particularly, well, ...educational.  Indeed, in a soon-to-be published piece in the APA journal, Professional Psychology, he notes, ...
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Since the 1960's, over 10,000 "how-to" book on psychotherapy have been published.  I joke about this fact at my workshops, stating "Any field that needs ten thousand books to describe what it's doing...surely doesn't know what its doing!" I continue, pointing out that, "There aren't 10,000 plus books on 'human anatomy,' for ...
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Not too long ago, my colleagues and I published some preliminary thoughts and findings from our research into "Supershrinks." That differences in effectiveness exist between clinicians is neither surprising or new.  Indeed, "therapist effects"--as they are referred to in the research literature--have been documented for decades and rival the contribution ...
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Image via Wikipedia "History doesn't repeat itself," the celebrated American author, Mark Twain once observed, "but it does rhyme." No better example of Twain's wry comment than recurring claims about specifc therapeutic approaches. As any clinician knows, every year witnesses the introduction of new treatment models.  Invariably, the developers ...
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Mark your calendars!  The International Center for Clinical Excellence is pleased to announce the “Achieving Clinical Excellence” (ACE) conference to be held at the Westin Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri on October 20-22nd, 2010. K. Anders Erickson, Ph.D., the editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance and recognized ...
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For years, my colleagues and I have been using the phrase "practice-based evidence" to refer to clinicians' use of real-time feedback to develop, guide, and evaluate behavioral health services. Against a tidal wave of support from professional and regulatory bodies, we argued that the "evidence-based practice"--the notion that certain treatments ...
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