4 Dec

What does successful psychotherapy look like through the eyes of clients?

Success in psychotherapy is often assessed as the relief of symptoms such as anxiety or depression. However, our qualitative meta-analysis of 177 studies shows that symptom relief accounts for only a fraction of the changes that clients describe after psychotherapy. Beyond symptom relief, clients talk about a deeper self-understanding, improved relationships with others, or a greater ability to actively influence their lives. These reports, based on the testimonies of 2908 clients, suggest that psychotherapy is not just a treatment of psychopathology, but also a process that promotes fundamental transformations in the perception of self, others and the world around us, and the ability to lead a fulfilling and meaningful life. These findings highlight the need for more comprehensive approaches to assessing psychotherapy outcomes that capture the overall quality of life and the unique meaning of therapeutic change for each client beyond symptom relief.

9 Oct

Active inference and therapeutic change

Active inference is a theoretical framework from the realm of cognitive science, neuroscience, and computational psychiatry that helps in modelling perception, decision making, and learning. It portrays a person as someone who is not just a passive recipient of information, but whose internal (or generative) model actively shapes how they perceive and interpret the world around them. Clients' mental difficulties or psychopathologies are then seen as the result of an inappropriately "configured" (or suboptimal) generative model. We were interested whether therapeutic change itself can be explained within this theoretical framework. Our review study offers an answer: We identified a total of 22 studies that use the language of active inference to describe the psychotherapeutic process.

16 Sep

We hosted the 6th Joint European & UK SPR Chapters Conference

On September 12-14, the Faculty of Social Studies hosted the 6th Joint European & UK SPR Chapters Conference. Although the atmosphere of the conference was affected by the flood situation, overall it was a very successful event with almost 200 participants from 27 countries. A big thank you to all the volunteers from the Department of Psychology for ensuring the smooth running of the event, to Matyho chálka for the excellent catering and to the VIDA! science centre for providing the venue for the closing banquet.

3 Sep

How do psychotherapists work with faith and religion?

In our qualitative meta-analysis of 52 primary studies, we found that spirituality and religiosity influence not only the therapeutic process but also therapists' professional identity, and are also reflected in the broader context of the therapeutic profession, including training. The psychotherapists in the primary studies differed in the way they linked or, conversely, separated spirituality and religiosity from the psychotherapy profession. While for some these were two inseparable and harmoniously related aspects of life, for others faith and religion were incompatible with their therapeutic work, and for others they represented resources that could be integrated into therapy to varying degrees as needed. Also, in the therapeutic process itself, faith and religion manifested themselves in many different ways, some of which appeared to help the therapeutic process, while others appeared to hinder it.

19 Aug

The importance of qualitative research for the formulation of clinical guidelines

Clinical guidelines in psychotherapy are usually formulated on the basis of experimental studies. While these may demonstrate the effectiveness of a particular approach, they do not allow for the exploration of many important aspects of treatment, such as clients' subjective experience of the therapeutic process, the clinical decision-making process of therapists, or the optimal way of tailoring the therapeutic approach to the needs of a given client. Qualitative research can make a crucial contribution to all of this. We have contributed to an article that clearly summarizes the arguments for considering the results of qualitative studies in the development of clinical guidelines.

12 Aug

What does complexity theory have to offer psychotherapy?

Nonlinear changes often occur in the course of psychotherapy. The client's state may fluctuate during therapy, may change in leaps and bounds, or may return in repetitive patterns, for example. Traditional statistical methods cannot realistically capture these processes. In our review study, we analyzed information from 41 articles in which the authors applied dynamic system and complexity theories to psychotherapy. These studies used mathematical methods to better understand the complex dynamics of psychotherapy.

29 Jul

Effectiveness of psychotherapy in the context of Czech health insurance companies’ preventive programs

We have published probably the largest study to date on the effectiveness of psychotherapy in the Czech context. The aim was to find out how effective is therapy within the preventive programs of health insurance companies — i.e. short-term individual therapy provided in private practices. The magnitude of change in depression and anxiety corresponds to the effectiveness of psychotherapy commonly reported in similar foreign studies, and there was also a noticeable change in the area of accompanying somatic symptoms. The effectiveness of psychotherapy in our study was not related to the amount of psychotherapists' profession experience or their theoretical orientation and was only marginally related to their primary profession.

9 Jul

Is it possible to measure psychotherapeutic change retrospectively?

Traditionally, at least two measurements — before and after therapy — are required to measure therapeutic change. But is it possible to capture change with a single retrospective measurement — that is, by directly asking a client about the magnitude of perceived change? We have found that a questionnaire based on this approach measures change in a similar way to traditional pre-post measures. It has the advantage of being more sensitive to change and easier to implement in practice. The disadvantage is clients' tendency to overestimate the magnitude of change compared to traditional pre-post measurement.