Patient attachment and reflective functioning as predictors for therapist in-session feelings.

Therapists' in-session feelings in psychotherapy can be seen as indications of the development of the therapeutic relationship and the therapeutic process. To manage them appropriately, it is important to know to what extent they may be influenced by patients' pretreatment characteristics. This study aims to improve the understanding of therapists' emotional reactions in the psychotherapeutic setting by investigating if patients' pretreatment mentalization ability and attachment style predicted therapist in-session feelings.

Change in reflective functioning in interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy for major depressive disorder.

Background: Patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have been found to have restricted capacity for mentalization, and it is possible that this constitutes a vulnerability factor for developing depression. Due to its focus on linking depressive symptomatology to emotions and interpersonal relations, it was hypothesized that Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) would improve mentalization more than Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Methods: In a randomized controlled trial of 90 patients undergoing IPT and CBT for MDD, Reflective Functioning (RF) was rated from Adult Attachment and from Depression-Specific Reflective Functioning (DSRF) Interviews before and after therapy.

"What shall we focus on?" - A thematic analysis of what characterizes cognitive-behavior therapy sessions with high or low quality of working alliance.

Objective: Several studies have shown that the quality of the working alliance predicts symptomatic improvement session-by-session, including in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). We wanted to explore what characterizes CBT sessions with high and low alliances further using qualitative analysis.

Method: Ten CBT-sessions were selected from eight patients' therapies in a larger research project on psychotherapy for patients with major depression.

Session-to-session effects of therapist adherence and facilitative conditions on symptom change in CBT and IPT for depression.

Objective: The objective of this study was to analyze the effect of adherence to both specific technique factors and facilitative condition variables (e.g., therapists' involvement, understanding and support) in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT).

Does it make a difference to be more "on the same page"? Investigating the role of alliance convergence for outcomes in two different samples.

: To better understand the complexity of dyadic processes, such as the mechanisms of the working alliance, researchers recommend taking advantage of innovations in data analytic procedures when studying the interactions between therapists and patients that are associated with favorable therapeutic outcomes. Inspired by a recent line of alliance research using dyadic multilevel modeling, the present study investigated the hypothesis that convergence in the patient-therapist working alliance (i.e.

The reciprocal relationship between alliance and early treatment symptoms: A two-stage individual participant data meta-analysis.

Objective: Even though the early alliance has been shown to robustly predict posttreatment outcomes, the question whether alliance leads to symptom reduction or symptom reduction leads to a better alliance remains unresolved. To better understand the relation between alliance and symptoms early in therapy, we meta-analyzed the lagged session-by-session within-patient effects of alliance and symptoms from Sessions 1 to 7.

Method: We applied a 2-stage individual participant data meta-analytic approach.

Improvement of the working alliance in one treatment session predicts improvement of depressive symptoms by the next session.

Objective: Developments in working alliance theory posit that the therapist's attention to fluctuations in the alliance throughout treatment is crucial. Accordingly, researchers have begun studying the alliance as a time-varying mechanism of change rather than as a static moderator. However, most studies to date suffer from bias owing to the nonindependence of error term and predictors (endogeneity).

Randomized Trial of Interpersonal Psychotherapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Major Depressive Disorder in a Community-Based Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic.

Background: Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are both evidence-based treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD). Several head-to-head comparisons have been made, mostly in the United States. In this trial, we compared the two treatments in a small-town outpatient psychiatric clinic in Sweden.

Multilevel Exploratory Factor Analysis of the Feeling Word Checklist-24.

Emotional reactions are a vital part of the therapeutic relationship. The Feeling Word Checklist-24 (FWC-24) is an instrument asking the clinician (or the patient) to report to what degree he or she has experienced various feelings during a therapeutic interaction. The aim of this study was to assess the factor structure of the clinician-rated FWC-24 when taking dependencies in the data into account.

Reflective functioning as predictor of working alliance and outcome in the treatment of depression.

Aims: Although considerable attention has been paid to the concept of mentalization in psychotherapy, there is little research on mentalization as predictor of psychotherapy process and outcome. Using data from a randomized controlled trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy for depression, we studied mentalization in 85 outpatients with major depressive disorder (MDD) according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It was hypothesized that patients showing lower capacity for mentalization would experience poorer quality of alliance and worse outcome.