Even ‘super-shrink’ has a weak spot. And you?
Ongoing research is suggesting that expertise may be domain or disorder specific, rather than reflecting a core therapeutic attribute or skill. No matter how good we are, we can’t be all things to all clients. Even ‘supershrink’ has a weak spot, and it’s not...
How do we counter this?
What’s the difference between an AI-chatbot and a human therapist? Not much, according to a recently published study looking at recent chatbot use by people with ongoing mental health conditions. Like it or not, we seem to have some competition. How should we respond?...
Does brief therapy yield better outcomes?
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...
How many of your clients get better? Our survey results
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...
How many of your clients improve?
In this blog post we’ll ask you what proportion of your clients improve, stay the same, and deteriorate. We’ll be inviting you to take part in another brief, anonymous, survey to share your thoughts. We’ll then publish the results and contrast them with the results of...
Where are the below average therapists?
We asked you to rate your skills and performance compared to your professional peers. You told us, and we compared your responses to those from a 2012 study which asked the same question. Despite some startling differences between the two, however, still very few of...
How do you rate your skills as a therapist?
How do we rate our skills and performance as therapists? How do we think they compare with those of others? A survey published some years back addressed these questions. We’re curious to see if anything’s changed, and we’re inviting you to take part...
Moving beyond our silos…
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...
Are you getting less effective?
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? Table of contentsFirst, some difficult...
Therapy’s image problem?
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...
Can AI help me reduce dropout?
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...










