Helping Couples Connect during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial of an Awareness, Courage, and Love Intervention.

Background: A second pandemic of mental health problems due to COVID-19 is predicted, suggesting a demand for interventions to mitigate its impacts. This study evaluated the effectiveness of an online psychological intervention based on the Awareness, Courage, and Love (ACL) model from Functional Analytic Psychotherapy to promote closeness between couples during the pandemic.

Method: Thirty-one couples were randomised into either the intervention or control group for a 2-hour online group session.

Creating safe, evocative, attuned, and mutually vulnerable therapeutic beginnings: Strategies from functional analytic psychotherapy.

Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP), with its emphasis on the creation of a safe, evocative, attuned, authentic, and mutually vulnerable therapeutic relationship, offers strategies that are especially relevant for therapeutic beginnings that yield an engaging and potent treatment. The 5 rules of FAP provide behavioral specificity in the early tasks of therapy that can build a powerful alliance with clients: creating trust and safety, moving the conversation from content to in-the-moment process, evoking and naturally reinforcing client target behaviors related to authentic expression, instilling hope, being aware of clinical impact, and promoting generalization of in-session gains to daily life. It is hoped that FAP offers a conceptually clear and inspiring transtheoretical framework that sets the stage for a deeply meaningful and unforgettable therapy.

Introduction to using structured evocative activities in Functional Analytic Psychotherapy.

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) focuses on what happens in session between clients and therapists in order to create more intense and curative therapeutic relationships. FAP may be used as a standalone treatment or as an adjunct to other therapies in order to maximize therapeutic gains through strengthened alliance and differential reinforcement. When it fits within a client's case conceptualization, FAP clinicians often choose to use structured, evocative activities to progress the therapy at a faster pace.

Saying good goodbyes to your clients: A functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) perspective.

Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) promotes client growth by shaping clients' daily life problems that also show up in session with their therapists. FAP therapists create evocative contexts within therapy that afford clients the opportunity to practice, refine, and be reinforced for new, more adaptive behaviors which then can be generalized into their outside lives. In FAP, the termination process will vary from client to client depending on the nature of the client's problems and targets.

Reducing inadvertent clinical errors: Guidelines from functional analytic psychotherapy.

Two common types of clinical errors, inadvertently reinforcing client problem behaviors or inadvertently punishing client improvements, are conceptualized from the viewpoint of Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP), a treatment that harnesses the power of the therapeutic relationship. Understanding the functions of client behaviors such as incessant talking and over compliance can lead to more compassionate and effective intervention, and a functional analysis of seemingly problematic behaviors such as silence and lack of cooperation indicate how they may be client improvements. Suggestions are provided for how to more accurately conceptualize whether client behaviors are problems or improvements, and to increase awareness of therapist vulnerabilities that can lead to errors.

Functional analytic psychotherapy: a behavioral relational approach to treatment.

Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) is a relational approach to psychotherapy that is behavioral, yet involves an intensive, emotional, and in-depth therapy experience. FAP is approachable by therapists of diverse theoretical backgrounds owing to the minimal use of behavioral jargon, and can be used as an addition or complement to other interventions. The methods described in this article-being aware of clients' clinically relevant behaviors, being courageous in evoking clinically relevant behaviors, reinforcing improvements with therapeutic love, using behavioral interpretations to help clients generalize changes to daily life, and providing intensive and personal experiential training of FAP practitioners-maximize the impact of the therapeutic relationship to promote change and personal growth for both clients and therapists.

The use of awareness, courage, therapeutic love, and behavioral interpretation in Functional Analytic Psychotherapy.

Interventions from Functional Analytic Psychotherapy focus on what happens in-session between clients and therapists to create more intense and curative therapeutic relationships. The methods described--being aware of clients' clinically relevant behaviors, being courageous in evoking clinically relevant behaviors, reinforcing improvements with therapeutic love, and using behavioral interpretations to help clients generalize changes to daily life--point to compelling directions in personal growth and change for both clients and therapists.

Randomized trial of behavioral activation, cognitive therapy, and antidepressant medication in the prevention of relapse and recurrence in major depression.

This study followed treatment responders from a randomized controlled trial of adults with major depression. Patients treated with medication but withdrawn onto pill-placebo had more relapse through 1 year of follow-up compared to patients who received prior behavioral activation, prior cognitive therapy, or continued medication. Prior psychotherapy was also superior to medication withdrawal in the prevention of recurrence across the 2nd year of follow-up.

Treatment-resistant OCD, inflated responsibility, and the therapeutic relationship: two case examples.

This paper is about the use of an unconventional intervention for treatment-resistant OCD that we describe as 'Therapist Assumes Responsibility' (TAR). The use of TAR in this paper as a clinical treatment parallels an experimental analysis by Lopatka and Rachman (1995). Two case studies are used to illustrate TAR and the use of the therapist-client relationship in the treatment of OCD.

Sudden gains and outcome: a broader temporal analysis of cognitive therapy for depression.

Individual Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) time courses of 38 clients receiving cognitive therapy (CT) and a modified form of CT were studied in order to investigate temporal changes during CT for depression. The primary aim was to determine if alternative methods of defining and computing gains occurring early in CT would alter the conclusions drawn in the current literature. Three types of gains were studied: sudden gains (previously studied sudden, substantial, and stable improvements in depression during 1 between-session interval after Session 2), first-session gains (occurring after first sessions), and pretreatment gains (occurring after pretreatment assessments).

Randomized trial of behavioral activation, cognitive therapy, and antidepressant medication in the acute treatment of adults with major depression.

Antidepressant medication is considered the current standard for severe depression, and cognitive therapy is the most widely investigated psychosocial treatment for depression. However, not all patients want to take medication, and cognitive therapy has not demonstrated consistent efficacy across trials. Moreover, dismantling designs have suggested that behavioral components may account for the efficacy of cognitive therapy.

Reasons for quitting serotonin reuptake inhibitor therapy: paradoxical psychological side effects and patient satisfaction.

Background: The goal of this study was to document the existence of psychological side effects associated with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) taken for depression and to determine their relationship to patients' decisions to stop treatment, and attitudes toward taking SSRIs again.

Method: We conducted 161 semi-structured telephone interviews of adults who had completed a course of treatment for depression with one of the SSRIs. We identified 29 categories of unwanted psychological effects and analyzed data in terms of responders and non-responders, the former split into those who would, and those who would not take the same drug again if depressed in the future ('take-again responders' and 'not-again responders', respectively).