Posts tagged with 'therapeutic alliance'
Behavioural systems: attachment (care seeking), care giving, exploration, sex, & power
15th November 2009
This post is also available as a Word format download. I have written several blog posts about attachment in the last couple of months - "Attachment, compassion & relationships", "A couple of fine, recent books on attachment", "Some great attachment websites", and "Assessing attachment in adults". In my post on …
Recent research: six studies on emotional & relationship ‘intelligence’ – placebo, warmth, mindfulness, & emotions
22nd October 2009
Here are half a dozen research papers that have recently interested me in the broad areas of emotional and relationship "intelligence" (all details & abstracts to these studies are given further down this blog posting). Kelley et al report on "Patient and practitioner influences on the placebo effect" which in …
Assessing attachment in adults
18th October 2009
I'm a doctor and psychotherapist who's interested in using attachment ideas to improve how helpful I can be for clients. Awareness of attachment issues informs therapy, it doesn't dictate it. An obvious question is whether it's sometimes worth assessing attachment in a "formal" way. I'm no expert in this area. …
The health professions: selfless vocation or well-paid career?
2nd August 2009
The overlap between money and the health professions seems to involve a complex, multi-faceted set of issues. I was triggered into thinking about this by the coincidence of three events. One was a conversation at the recent annual BABCP psychotherapy conference, a second was reading Lewis Hyde's book "The gift", …
Exeter conference day 2: mindfulness & health anxiety, body dysmorphic disorder, therapeutic alliance, and politics
17th July 2009
Second day of the full conference. Again good conversation at breakfast ... great. Then off along small tracks through the university grounds to end up at a symposium on research using Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) to help people suffering from severe Health Anxiety Disorder. Four papers were presented. Although the …
Recent research: six papers relevant to psychotherapy
28th May 2009
Here are six studies relevant to improving psychotherapy outcomes. Brewin et al report on using imagery-based interventions to help people with depressioin. Lydiard et al highlight the importance of sleep-related disturbances as a treatment target in PTSD. McCrady and colleagues show that working with couples rather than just individuals seems …
Handouts & questionnaires for depression, CBASP & neuroscience
18th May 2009
Here is a mixed bag of handouts and questionnaires. Most are spin-offs from CBASP (pronounced 'seebasp') - the awkwardly named cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy. There are also a few handouts which are adapted downloads from the neurosciences site "The brain from top to bottom". When in 2000, Keller …
Self disclosure by health professionals
18th January 2009
Blogging about my mum's illness and my reactions to it led me to think again about self disclosure by health professionals. Our job is to be helpful for our clients - it's what we're about. Self disclosure by health professionals is a mixed bag. It can sometimes be helpful and …
Handouts & questionnaires for summary, reflection, screening, progress charts, empathy & confidence, and more
6th October 2008
Here are a series of forms that I use almost every session with clients, or for screening and orientation at the start of therapy: Summary sheet - at the end of virtually every session with a client I move my chair round to sit beside them and, using a clipboard …
Draft SIGN non-pharmacological depression treatments guideline, 8th post: therapeutic alliance in the treatment of depression
25th September 2008
There was some discussion at the SIGN "Non-pharmacological management of depression" seminar about the possible importance of the therapeutic alliance in depression treatment. Professor Kevin Power said that SIGN had not found any good research that threw light on this issue. This is somewhat surprising because there is a fair …