Objective: Social psychological research has indicated that people strive for self-consistent feedback and interactions, even if negative, to preserve the epistemic security of knowing themselves. Without such , any interpersonal exchange may become frustrated, anxiety-riddled, and at risk for deterioration. Thus, it may be important for therapists to meet patients' self-verification needs as a responsive precondition for early alliance establishment and development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study explored mental health care patients and therapists' perspectives on using therapists' measurement-based and problem-specific effectiveness data to inform case assignments - a type of treatment personalization that has been shown to outperform non-measurement-based case assignment as usual (Constantino et al., 2021). We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 8 patients (75% women; M age = 33.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Patient-reported outcomes data reveal differences both in therapists' global effectiveness across their average patient (between-therapist effect) and in treating different problems within their caseload (within-therapist effects). Yet, it is unclear how accurately therapists perceive their own measurement-based, problem-specific effectiveness and whether such self-perceptions predict global between-therapist performance differences. We explored these questions in naturalistic psychotherapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: More positive pre- or early therapy patient outcome expectation (OE) has consistently correlated with better treatment outcomes. Thus, it is important to identify factors that contribute to patients' OE, which can inform therapist responsivity to such risk or facilitative markers. With growing research on OE correlates-centered primarily on patient characteristics/treatment factors and, to a lesser extent, therapist factors-a comprehensive synthesis is warranted to elucidate replicated and mixed associations and stimulate further research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA meta-analysis revealed a positive correlation between patients' optimistic baseline, or early treatment, outcome expectation (OE) and posttreatment improvement (Constantino, Vîslă, et al., [2018]. A meta-analysis of the association between patients' early treatment outcome expectation and their posttreatment outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough psychotherapy is generally efficacious, a substantial number of patients fail to improve meaningfully, whereas still others deteriorate. Moreover, psychotherapists have difficulty forecasting which patients are at risk for nonresponse or deterioration, especially when relying predominantly on their judgment. These limitations have implications for the ethical practice of psychotherapy, and they call for remediation strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychotherapy (Chic)
March 2019
As the conceptualization of evidence-based practice expands beyond the phasic application of treatment manuals for specific mental health diagnoses, greater attention is being paid to treatment personalization, including at its very first steps. One approach to such early personalization involves therapist flexible responsivity to patients' presenting nondiagnostic characteristics, such as their treatment-related beliefs, that are known to correlate with treatment outcomes. Such tailoring represents one element of the context-responsive psychotherapy integration framework that privileges the therapist's use of evidence-informed strategies in response to specific patient characteristics and contextual process markers (Constantino, Boswell, Bernecker, & Castonguay, 2013).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current research examined accuracy and bias in daily forecasts within romantic relationships. Results of an extensive daily report study involving 200 romantic dyads and 4,822 daily observations suggested that predictions regarding affect and partner behavior that will occur tomorrow are somewhat accurate, predicted by actual experiences tomorrow, but are largely biased by current experiences. Participants appeared to project the current state of their relationship into the future, a temporal projection bias.
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