I have already written blog posts about the great half day pre-conference workshop I went to - "Glasgow BABCP conference: Pre-conference workshop - the excellent Michelle Craske on 'Exposure therapy in the 21st century'" - and the first full day of the conference - "Glasgow BABCP conference: 1st day - lecture rant, Anke Ehlers on PTSD, a workshop on 'the strong & curious therapist', and more".  Sadly I didn't get to the second day of the conference, but I certainly went to the final half day attending a very fine two hour 'clinical skills' class with Jaime Delgadillo on&nb

I've already written a couple of posts about this trip to Sweden - "Achieving clinical excellence (ACE): the 'Becoming a more effective practitioner' conference in Sweden" and yesterday's Achieving clinical excellence: pre-conference workshop 'What is FIT?

I wrote yesterday about arriving in Sweden.  Howevery I'm primarily here for the ACE Conference, so how was yesterday's pre-conference workshop with Scott Miller & Bruce Wampold - "What is FIT, the research behind it and how to do it"?   Well, my initial response was one of some disappointment.  It felt to me that the combination of these two fine researchers/presenters was probably less than the sum of their parts ...

I'm off to Sweden this weekend, seizing the chance for some 'touristing' in Stockholm before taking a train north to the 'Achieving clinical excellence (ACE)' conference in Ostersund.  If becoming a more effective practitioner interests you and you can't get to Sweden this May, then there is plenty of opportunity to participate in the conference online.

And now in Ostersund, on the morning of the pre-conference workshop day, I look back very fondly on my brief stay in Stockholm.  What a really lovely city it is ... and I felt surprisingly at home (maybe some Viking genes?).

                      (this blog post is freely downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

I wrote a post recently called "Truly excellent therapists have 'grace under interpersonal pressure - Fascinating new research".

Hemingway wrote "Courage is grace under pressure".  New research underlines that "grace under interpersonal pressure" is a key ability of truly excellent therapists.  Study after study has shown that psychotherapists vary considerably in how helpful they are for their clients.  The slide below shows a typical set of findings:

                                       (downloadable as a Powerpoint slide and as a PDF file)

Counselling & psychotherapy are often helpful.  In fact they are more effective than, for example, many interventions in cardiology or ...  .  Worryingly though ... despite a wealth of emerging research ... there has been little improvement in the outcomes we achieve.  The same, of course, could be said about pharmacological approaches to mental health problems.  Training, qualifications & years of experience make surprisingly little difference to the results therapists achieve.  Yet there is considerable variation in the success rates of different therapists ... although therapists themselves are poor judges of their own effectiveness.  In this situation, methodical, skilful use of feedback on client progress holds arguably more promise than any other way of improving therapist success rates.  More to follow.

Yesterday was my second full day here in Amsterdam at the "Achieving Clinical Excellence" conference put on by the International Center for Clinical Excellence.  The first full day had been a workshop with Scott Miller on "Feedback informed treatment: pushing your clinical effectiveness to the next level".  This second day was the start of the conference proper and was entitled "Excellence: what do we know and what can we learn?".   I walked in from my hotel thinking that I'd be hard pushed to come up with a day of lectures that would interest me more than this exploration of what makes for clinical excellence.

On Wednesday evening I flew into Amsterdam Schiphol airport for three days of workshop & conference on feedback systems & the development of excellence in psychotherapy.  What a fascinating subject area to explore.  What a treat.  From the airport I caught a train to Amsterdam Zuid and then walked up through the sunny streets to my hotel.  They were short of rooms and upgraded me to the 6th floor ... two walls of windows and a view to die for.  A good start!