BACPs latest public attitudes survey reveals that 77% of people who’ve had therapy would recommend it to somebody who had emotional difficulties or a mental health problem. Question is, should we be throwing our hats in the air at that percentage, or should we be concerned? 77% of respondents would recommend counselling Following a recent…
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AI divides opinion, doesn’t it? Recently, I decided to overcome my entirely unfounded prejudices against it and put Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard AI platforms through their paces. Could they suggest three ways, I asked them, based on research, in which I could reduce dropout? Turns out they know their stuff – their three…
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However much we might think our therapy model is uniquely different from other modalities, it would appear that there are some therapeutic strategies that we all share. In that sense, they are truly transtheoretical. Are these the principles that connect us all as therapists? Consensus across the modalities of therapy? “My fantasy is that one…
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Remember 2012? A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, but who would have predicted some of the events that have taken place in the intervening years? Who would have predicted the 2012 Olympic Games would have been a stunning success that brought people in the UK, albeit briefly, closer together? Who…
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The 2021 – 22 IAPT Annual Report delivered an unexpected surprise. Set against other therapy modalities, and its own past performance, the recovery rate for CBT has deteriorated significantly in the past year. Here, we showcase the data and speculate on what might lie behind this drop in performance. I have to confess I don’t…
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What do the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng and the founding principles of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Programme (IAPT) have in common? Answer: A hopeful start, after which both have failed to survive contact with reality. The difference? One has had a vanishingly short half-life, while the other, despite recovery rates falling…
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Doing effective therapy is hard enough on its own. Integrating measures of outcome into the process adds additional complexity. Do it well, and the purpose, meaning and value of using measures is integrated into conversations. Do it poorly, and we hear the crunch of gears and a trail of potential alliance fractures. As this recent…
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Meet Jordan Harris, a counselor based in the US. Our previous blog was the result of an invite from Jordan to contribute to his website. Here, we return the complement and make space for a perspective from Jordan, who shares (as part of a blog series) how his approach to alliance building helps him to…
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It’s a provocative question, isn’t it? It’s also the title of a recent blog post, more of which below. Looking back at my outcomes over 25 years, the answer depends on what period I’m looking at. I know that when I’ve got complacent, or stopped looking at my data, it’s shown in my outcomes. So,…
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In their new book Outcome Measures and Evaluation in Counselling and Psychotherapy, authors Chris Evans and Jo-anne Carlyle have pulled off a rare feat. In making some important statistical concepts accessible, presenting ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments for measurement in a balanced way, and leading the reader through a range of implementation scenarios, they have written the…
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