“I can’t let others know…”: Shame as a Barrier to Professional Development
Shame (noun \ˈshām\): Consciousness of shortcoming, guilt, or impropriety. Turns out, for many therapists, this powerful and painful emotion is a significant barrier to professional development. Doing psychotherapy is challenging in the best of circumstances. As many as 25% of clients drop out before experiencing a measureable improvement ...
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Three, Free Evidence-Based Resources for Improving Individual Therapist Effectiveness
Take a look at the figure to the right. It's data taken from the largest study conducted in the history of psychotherapy research examining the relationship between experience and effectiveness. Each of the smaller lines represents the outcomes of an individual practitioner followed, in some cases, over a 17-year period ...
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The Asch Effect: The Impact of Conformity, Rebelliousness, and Ignorance in Research on Psychology and Psychotherapy
Consider the photo above. If you ever took Psych 101, it should be familiar. The year is 1951. The balding man on the right is psychologist, Solomon Asch. Gathered around the table are a bunch of undergraduates at Swarthmore College participating in a vision test. Briefly, the procedure began with ...
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The Replication Crisis in Psychology: What is and is NOT being talked about
Psychology has been in the headlines a fair bit of late—and the news is not positive. I blogged about this last year, when a study appeared documenting that the effectiveness of CBT was declining--50% over the last four decades. The problem is serious. Between 2012 and 2014, for example, a ...
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How Deliberate Practice can Improve Your Therapeutic Effectiveness
One year ago, colleagues and I released the largest, longitudinal study of therapist effectiveness ever published. The study examined outcomes of 6500 clients treated by 170 practitioners whose results had been tracked an average of 5 years—some as long as 17 years! The result? Clinician outcomes, on average, not only ...
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“Mind the Gap”: A Strategy for Insuring you get the Feedback you need to Improve your Game (whatever that is)
Join me in a brief "thought experiment." Suppose you were a gifted painter or photographer and had the chance to provide an image of yourself that would endure--and perhaps be the only one people would know you by--for hundreds of years after your death. How would you proceed? What criteria ...
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Does practice make perfect?
“Practice does not make perfect,” my friend, and award-winning magician, Michael Ammar, is fond of saying. “Rather,” he observes, “practice makes permanent.” Thus, if we are not getting better as we work, our work will simply insure our current performance stays the same. Now, before reading any further, watch a ...
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Dodos and Dropouts: Two Chronic Problems in Psychotherapy (and what clinicians can do about them)
Last week, my inbox started filling with emails from colleagues about a new study. Working with a real world sample, researchers compared dynamic therapy to cognitive therapy and found… (drum roll please) NO DIFFERENCE IN OUTCOME! Long ago, psychologist Saul Rosenzweig dubbed the equivalence in outcome between competing brands of ...
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Making the Impossible, Possible: The Fragile Balance
Trip-Advisor scores it # 11 out of 45 things to do Sausalito, California. No, it not’s the iconic Golden Gate Bridge or Point Bonita Lighthouse. Neither is it one of the fantastic local restaurants or bars. What’s more, in what can be a fairly pricey area, this attraction won’t cost ...
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Why aren’t therapists talking about this?
Turns out, every year, for the last several years, and right around this time, I’ve done a post on the subject of deterioration in psychotherapy. In June 2014, I was responding to yet another attention-grabbing story published in The Guardian, one of the U.K.’s largest daily newspapers. “Misjudged counselling and ...
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NERD ALERT: Determining IF, WHAT, and HOW Psychotherapy Works
OK, this post may not be for everyone. I’m hoping to “go beyond the headlines,” “dig deep,” and cover a subject essential to research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy. So, if you fit point #2 in the definition above, read on. It's easy to forget the revolution that ...
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Improving the Odds: Implementing FIT in Care for Problem Gamblers and their Families
Quick Healthcare Quiz What problem in the U.S. costs the government approximately $274 per adult annually? If you guessed gambling, give yourself one point. According to the latest research, nearly 6 million Americans have a serious gaming problem—a number that is on the rise. One-third of the Nation’s adults ...
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Do you know Norman Malone? FIT, Grit, and Grace Personified
At the tender age of 10, Norman Malone’s father attacked him and his two younger brothers with a hammer while they slept. Their mother, drugged into unconsciousness by her husband the prior evening, found the children the next morning. Each had suffered grave head wounds, but were alive. Later, all ...
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Psychotherapy and the Cure for the Common Cold
What do the common cold and psychotherapy have in common? Read on, the answers may surprise you…
- Lost productivity costs are roughly the same for the common cold and most common mental health problems;
- The common cold and most common mental health problems affect an amazingly large group ...
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What is the essential quality of effective Feedback? New research points the way
“We should not try to design a better world,” says Owen Barder, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, “We should make better feedback loops.” Feedback has become a bit of a buzzword in mental health. Therapists are being asked to use formal measures of progress and the quality ...
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Are you Better? Improving Effectiveness One Therapist at a Time
Greetings from snowy Sweden. I’m in the beautiful city of Gothenburg this week, working with therapists and administrators on implementing Feedback-Informed Treatment (FIT). I’m always impressed by the dedication of those who attend the intensive workshops. More, I feel responsible for providing a training that not only results in mastery ...
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