All counsellors & psychotherapists in the UK need to have regular supervision if they want to maintain their professional accreditation.  A central reason for this is to support therapists in being as helpful as possible for their clients.  Unfortunately current approaches to supervision don't seem to do this particularly well.  In a recent issue of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy journal, Alfonsson et al in their article "The effects of clinical supervision on supervisees and patients in cognitive behavioral therapy: a systematic review" clearly state "No study could show benefits from supervision for patients."  And this depressing conclusion simply affirms what previous research has already highlighted for psychotherapy more generally ...

I'm running a one day workshop in Belfast this weekend entitled "Keeping up with research: does it make any difference to our practice?".  Here's a downloadable copy of the 50 or so slide initial Powerpoint presentation.  I'll also be giving the trainee cognitive therapists a series of exercises to try. Here are a set of these workshop slides.  They overlap considerably with the rather iconoclastic first presentation, but also provide a jumping off point for four major areas we focussed on ... 1.) how expertise is developed (Anders Ericsson's work).  2.) the importance of rapid feedback on how well things are going (balancing evidence-based practice with practice-based evidence).

A few days ago a client lent me a DVD of the film Groundhog Day.  It's a whimsical comedy about a guy who finds himself in a weird time loop where he has to repeat the same day again, and again, and again.  Luckily for him, he isn't condemned to act the same way every time.  He has choice.  A bit like each of us, he can experiment with trying different responses - and he gradually shifts from being a self-centred, unkind, impatient prima donna to someone much more caring, fun and worth being around.  My client talked about how much the film had helped him, and this led me to thinking again about the use of film as "therapy".