Page 3: Center for Psychotherapy Research

The Center for Psychotherapy Research consists of researchers from the Psychology Research Institute and the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno. It is dedicated to the implementation of research projects, as well as connecting the world of research and practice in the field of psychotherapy and counselling.

More about the Center

News

29 Jul 2024

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 2024

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.

17 Jun 2024

Measuring client preferences across languages and cultures

We have published a study comparing different language versions of the Cooper-Norcross Inventory of Preferences. We worked with data from the English, American, German, Belgian Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish and Chinese context. We were able to find a factor model that worked well across many languages and that allows us to compare therapeutic preferences across countries. An interesting finding was that the structure of preferences did not differ between people attending psychotherapy and those with no direct experience of psychotherapy.

10 Jun 2024

What do clients take away from sessions?

We discovered that in the initial phase of treatment (the first 5 sessions) two session reactions play a central role, namely (1) new discoveries related to the self and (2) finding a distance from one’s experiencing. These two reactions preceded other desirable reactions such as a sense of relief, perception of the therapeutic bond, and new discoveries about others. Clearly, a positive spiral of the treatment process seems to unfold if the client finds the treatment personally meaningful and can maintain a certain “distance” from the overwhelming experience of their life situation. Find more in our recent article.