Personalized Psychotherapy: Effective Methods for Tailoring Therapy to Individual Client with Dr. James Boswell Part 2

Psychotherapy and Applied Psychology: Conversations with research experts about mental health and psychotherapy for those interested in research, practice, and training

Special Guest:
Dr. James Boswell
Society for Psychotherapy Research
Keywords

low motivation, readiness to change, diminished outcome expectations, non-directive approach, motivational interviewing, humanistic principles, ambivalence, transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy, tailor therapy, therapeutic process, client-therapist relationship, matching, therapist selection, outcomes, preferences, routine outcome monitoring, therapist effectiveness, strengths and weaknesses

Takeaways

• Low motivation and readiness to change are related concepts in therapy.
• Therapists should have discussions with clients about their concerns and difficulties with change.
• Motivational interviewing principles and humanistic principles are important in working with clients who are low on motivation.
• Therapists should explore ambivalence about change and therapy, and work on building motivation and hope.
• Transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy combines different disorder-specific treatments into one approach, providing a more efficient and evidence-based therapy.
• Therapists should tailor their approach based on the client's primary problem and explore their expectations and concerns.
• Bringing the therapeutic process into the room and using the client-therapist relationship can be effective in therapy, even when using a cognitive behavioral approach.
• Matching clients with therapists based on characteristics like race or gender doesn't consistently lead to better outcomes.
• Matching black clients with a strong preference for black therapists can have a positive impact.
• Routine outcome monitoring feedback can be used to identify patterns of therapist effectiveness.
• Matching clients based on therapist outcomes can lead to more effective therapy.
• Therapists have concerns about how outcome data will be used and the potential consequences.
• There is a need for resources and training to help therapists improve in specific areas.
• The use of technology and AI could enhance process research and therapist training.
• The field needs to explore how to make use of session-level data to understand therapist effectiveness.
• Therapists and clients generally support the idea of using data to guide therapist selection.
• There is pushback from therapists who question the validity of outcome data and concerns about being pigeonholed.
• Resources for further exploration include articles by James Boswell and Michael Constantino on context responsive integration and the book 'Responsiveness in Psychotherapy' edited by Watson and Wiseman.

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