It surely makes sense that more sessions yield better outcomes, right? My improvement rates over the past five years, however, suggest otherwise. Basically, the higher my average sessions per client, the poorer my outcomes. In trying to understand this puzzle, I’m edging towards a conclusion that feels a little challenging. Why this topic, and why…
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We asked you to tell us what proportions of your clients improve, stay the same, and deteriorate. You told us, and we’ve compared your responses to those from a 2012 study which asked the same question, and to some established benchmarks. What do you think we found? Why this survey, and why now? We’re facing…
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Successfully implementing routine outcome measurement into our practice isn’t easy. Despite evidence that such feedback can enhance outcomes, over the years I’ve seen many more failures than successes. Why does it seem so difficult, and would creating a community help to make it stick? A history of coming up short… In over twenty years as…
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We’ve recently seen the publication of a sizeable study showing that therapists’ effectiveness appears to decline over time. It’s not the first to reach this finding. Why might this be, and how might this apply to you? First, some difficult news…. Buckle up, because I have some difficult news. It’s this – that there’s a…
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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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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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Why all the noise about progress feedback? Back in 2003, Professor Mike Lambert and colleagues published a paper titled Is it time for clinicians to routinely track patient outcome? A meta-analysis.The paper was a meta-analytic review of three large-scale studies whose findings suggested that formally monitoring client progress had a significant impact on outcomes for…
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