What are we learning? Over to you.
For many therapists and therapy services, the COVID-19 pandemic is turning the world we have known upside down. Unplanned endings, renegotiation of contracts and gear-crunching transitions from face-to-face to phone and online working are testing our resilience. How...
Are you ready for this?
With the world increasingly in lockdown how can we continue to work and to provide a service to the people who may really need it? This blog provides encouragement, some practical ideas and resources, including a brief, low cost online course to help you move your...
But is it therapy?
Is therapy delivered by phone effective? Is it even therapy? How does using the phone as a medium impact on factors such as therapeutic alliance, disclosure, empathy, attentiveness and participation? A recent study has looked at this area, and its results might...
It saved my life
A common criticism of standardised measures is that they don’t always capture the changes that have taken place in therapy. The fascinating and moving story of a client named Cora is a case in point. The question is, what lessons should we draw from it? Some months...
Hitting a new low
67% have experienced anxiety or depression. 71% have experienced burnout. Sadly, we’re not talking about clients. These are IAPT staff who responded to a recent survey. 41% indicated that they had been asked to manipulate performance data. Despite a recent airing of...
The link between empathy and outcome
We all know what empathy is. Or, at least we think we know. But what is it really, how is in expressed in the therapeutic relationship, and just how much difference does it make to the outcome of therapy? An updated meta-analysis of the links between therapist empathy...
IAPT 2019: Still failing to thrive?
According to the latest IAPT annual report for 2018 – 19, clients are, on average, accessing services well within target waiting times. The attrition that we’ve written about before, however, continues to undermine the claims that IAPT’s headline recovery rates...
The makings of a supershrink
Some therapists seem to achieve consistently better outcomes than the average. There’s lots of speculation about why. Here we take an in-depth look inside the practice of one such ‘supershrink’ and the experiences of her clients to try and better understand this...
Teacher, craftsperson or gardner? Which therapist are you?
How consciously do you adapt your approach to the way that you perceive the needs of your client? Do you occupy different roles or modes of working with different clients? I know I certainly do, but if you’d asked to me define those modes succinctly, I might...
Collaborative therapy relationships
More than a ‘nice to have’ philosophical approach, true collaboration with our clients makes a substantial difference to their engagement in therapy and their outcomes. We profile a paper that sets out the evidence for the power of collaboration and what it can look...