Bridging Practice & Research
Delve into the intersection of research and practice, where theory meets application. This section highlights how empirical research can inform clinical practice and how practical experiences can shape future research directions.
182 articles found
Making Group Psychotherapy More Effective with Progress Feedback
Suzy Suzy is a 42-year-old woman who has been suffering from depressive symptoms for at least six months. Most of the time she is feeling grumpy, irritable, and down. Normally, Suzy was never this quickly startled or negative, and people close to her almost do not recognize her anymore. Suzy has become isolated. After a […]
Marjolein M. W. Koementas-de Vos, M.Sc.
February 3, 2019
The Group Questionnaire
Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) represents a standard of practice as clinicians seek increasingly effective ways to provide therapeutic services to their clients. Comprised of three main approaches, EBP seeks to apply a structured, systematic approach to the provision of therapy through the use of empirically supported treatments, practice guidelines, and practice based evidence (Burlingame & Beecher, […]
Klinton Hobbs, Ph.D. + 5 more
January 20, 2019
Did I Make a Difference with My Client?
Professional practice is about making a difference with our clients—we want to help our clients reach their goals, and, we want our contribution to count. This is true in many professional settings, whether we offer treatment, counseling, training, education, or conduct applied research. But, how can we tell whether we actually have made a difference […]
Tomas F. Langkaas + 2 more
December 9, 2018
Therapist Dishonesty and Its Association With Levels of Clinical Experience
Introduction Despite many distinguishing characteristics of the therapeutic relationship, aspects of the dialogue between a therapist and a client can sometimes resemble everyday conversations. Namely, individuals in therapy may occasionally engage in the normative human behavior of lying. Blanchard and Farber (2016) found that 93% of clients report lying or otherwise being dishonest to their […]
Devlin Jackson, M.A. + 2 more
December 7, 2018
Helping Clinicians Build Identities as Practice-Based Researchers
Practice-based research, or research that is conducted in naturalistic care settings, often by clinicians, has the potential to advance the science and practice of psychotherapy. Unfortunately, relatively few clinicians are actively involved in conducting research and as a result, much of their clinical wisdom and treatment data are not represented in the scientific literature. There […]
Travis L. Osborne
October 28, 2018
The Alliance in Adult Psychotherapy
Abstract The alliance continues to be one of the most investigated variables related to success in psychotherapy irrespective of theoretical orientation. We define and illustrate the alliance (also conceptualized as therapeutic alliance, helping alliance, or working alliance) and then present a meta-analysis of 295 independent studies that covered more than 30,000 patients (published between 1978 […]
Christoph Flückiger, Ph.D., SwissBPP + 3 more
October 24, 2018
Overcoming a Primary Barrier to Practice-Based Research
Abstract Practice-based research is an important means of bridging the gap between the science and practice of psychotherapy. Unfortunately, numerous barriers exist for clinicians who want to conduct research in practice settings. One specific barrier that has received minimal attention in the literature—lack of access to institutional review board (IRB) oversight for independent ethics review—can […]
Travis L. Osborne + 1 more
September 11, 2018
Lessons Learned from Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse
In a previous article, we reviewed the major tenets and goals of community-based participatory research (CBPR). In this article, we’ll explain the lessons we learned from our PCORI-funded project, titled “Facilitating Male Trauma Survivors’ Meaningful Involvement in Research.” Introduction If you do a quick search for prevalence rates of childhood sexual abuse for males as […]
Amy E. Ellis, Ph.D. + 3 more
August 19, 2018
Community-Based Participatory Research
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a systematic way of approaching research endeavors with members of typically underserved communities (Danley & Ellison, 1997; Israel et al., 2004). The inherently collaborative approach is designed to foster co-learning, that is, a bi-directional process of learning in which researchers and community members work together to understand the unique needs […]
Amy E. Ellis, Ph.D. + 3 more
August 5, 2018
Making Psychotherapy Scalable by Teaching Nonprofessionals to Deliver Treatment to Each Other
Decades of psychotherapy outcome research and countless meta-analyses show that psychotherapy works. Unfortunately, psychotherapy is a luxury afforded to few. Only a minority of people with mental illness receive treatment (Kessler et al., 2005), due to both attitudinal barriers (e.g., stigma, desire for self-reliance) and structural barriers (e.g., cost, provider availability; Mojtabai et al., 2011). […]
Samantha L. Bernecker, M.S. + 1 more
May 4, 2018
Psychotherapists as Professional Communicators
Communication With the General Public If you were to meet me at a party, you might be forgiven for thinking that I am being purposefully rather vague about what I do for a living. When people ask me, I tend to answer with something like: “. . . I am a psychotherapist.” After the usual […]
Katie Aafjes-van Doorn, DClinPsy
October 22, 2017
Sharing Research Findings
Psychotherapists as Scientist Practitioners Research is important in the scientific field of psychotherapy, where we tend to think of ourselves as “scientist-practitioners” (Overholser, 2012). Although some psychologists are active researchers and clinicians, the importance of consuming research and research productivity as well as the attitudes toward science and research evidence might differ per setting (e.g., […]
Katie Aafjes-van Doorn, DClinPsy
August 6, 2017