The power of virtual connections: A randomized controlled trial of online positive psychotherapy training on effective communication skills of nursing students.

AIM: This research aimed to assess the impact of the online "Positive Psychotherapy- Based Key Model of Courtesy and Integrity" (KMCI)" program on the effective communication skills of nursing students. BACKGROUND: With the growing integration of virtual platforms in psychotherapy education, there is a burgeoning interest in understanding their influence on nursing student's communication abilities. Recognizing how online positive psychotherapy education shapes these skills is pivotal for enriching nursing education and practice. DESIGN: The study adopted a pre-test-post-test randomized controlled design and involved 64 undergraduate nursing students from a state university's nursing department during the 2021-2022 academic year, all enrolled in psychiatric nursing courses. METHODS: Students were divided into experimental and control groups through simple randomization. Pre-tests, encompassing a "Personal Information Form" and an "Effective Communication Skills Scale," were administered to both groups. Subsequently, the experimental group received the "Positive Psychotherapy- Based Key Model of Courtesy and Integrity" program online for five weeks, while no intervention was provided to the control group during this period. Post-tests were then conducted for both groups after five weeks. RESULTS: The findings revealed a significant increase (p<0.05) in the total scores of sub-dimensions, including "Ego-Enhancing Language, Active Listening, Self-Disclosure and Recognition, Empathy and Self-Language Scale" in the experimental group in both intra-group and inter-group comparisons. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the "Positive Psychotherapy- Based Key Model of Courtesy and Integrity" program effectively enhances practical communication skills among nursing students. Equipping students with the ability to integrate courtesy and integrity isn't effective.

Implementing a whole-of-service stepped care approach to personality disorder treatment: Impact of training and service redesign on clinician attitudes and skills.

Personality disorders are a highly prevalent mental health condition. Historically, clinician attitudes have been negative, and only a small number have specialised training. This study evaluated clinician attitudes and confidence in working with people with personality disorder following the combination of training and implementation of a stepped care whole-of-service approach. A total of 102 multidisciplinary mental health clinicians were trained to implement the stepped care approach, and completed surveys prior to implementation and at 12 months follow up. Clinicians delivered manualised structured psychological therapy as part of the model. Measures assessed changes in attitudes and confidence, and impact of the service changes and therapy approach. Qualitative responses elucidated core themes. Evaluation at 12 months post training and service redesign showed improvements in clinician skills, confidence, theoretical knowledge and attitudes. Qualitative thematic analysis found core themes of improved understanding, clinical skills and improvements in the accessibility and timeliness of treatment. Implementing a whole-of-service model featuring stepped care therapies enhanced clinician attitudes, confidence, skills and knowledge in working with people with personality disorders. Clinicians identified that the whole-of-service model also improved accessibility to treatment, and quality of clinical care to the consumer and their carers.

[Dealing with Lived Crisis Experience During Self-Experience: A Standardized Survey in Psychiatric Hospitals in Berlin and Brandenburg]. / Umgang mit eigenen Krisenerfahrungen in der Selbsterfahrung: Eine standardisierte Befragung in psychiatrischen Einrichtungen in Berlin und Brandenburg.

OBJECTIVE: The current study follows the question if psychotherapists with lived experiences of crisis and treatment address these experiences during their processes of self-experience. Further, the conceptual differentiation between self-experience and psychotherapy of this group of staff is explored. METHODS: 108 professionals with psychotherapeutic qualification were surveyed on their training self-experience. Relationships between processing of crisis experiences, crises frequency, and experienced benefit were analyzed using correlation analyses. Conceptual differences between self-experience and psychotherapy were gauged via nine content categories whose importance for self-experience and psychotherapy were rated by the participants. The means of these ratings were compared via t-test. RESULTS: Most participants reported that they had used their self-experience to process lived crisis experiences, and that they benefited from their self-experience, with processing and benefit being correlated significantly and positively. Conceptual differentiation of the two formats appeared to be complex. Participants ascribed biographical and personal categories rather to psychotherapy, and professional categories to self-experience. DISCUSSION: Given the prevalence of stigmatization towards individuals with mental health problems, it was surprising that most of the participants were able to address and process their lived experiences during their self-experience. It was surprising too that personal factors were ascribed to psychotherapy rather than self-experience, as the major importance of the therapeutic relationship and, by extension, personality development is well-known. CONCLUSION: Training self-experience should be a stigma-free setting, where future therapists are able to address their biographical burdens freely and thereby develop their personalities.

The Virtual Couch: a Curriculum on the Question of the Fundamentals of Remote Psychotherapy-Pilot Study.

OBJECTIVE: With a rise in remote clinical practice related to the COVID-19 pandemic, a novel remote psychotherapy curriculum was presented to psychiatry residents and fellows to address the urgent need to teach trainees how to adapt traditional psychotherapy skills to telepsychiatry settings. METHODS: Trainees completed a survey before and after receiving the curriculum to assess remote psychotherapy skills and areas for growth. RESULTS: Eighteen trainees (24% fellows, 77% residents) completed the pre-curriculum survey, and 28 trainees (26% fellows, 74% residents) completed the post-curriculum survey. Thirty-five percent of pre-curriculum participants indicated no experience with remote psychotherapy. Technology (24%) and patient engagement (29%) were identified as the greatest challenges in providing teletherapy pre-curriculum. Content related to patient care (69%) and technology (31%) was of most interest to pre-curriculum participants and identified as most helpful post-curriculum (53% and 26%, respectively). After receiving the curriculum, most trainees planned to make internal, provider-related changes to their remote teletherapy practice. CONCLUSIONS: The remote psychotherapy curriculum was well received by psychiatry trainees who had limited experience with remote clinical practice prior to the pandemic.

Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis in Indonesia.

Indonesia, a country with a vast population of approximately 275 million people on over 17,000 islands, currently has 1,221 psychiatrists nationwide. Psychodynamic psychiatry and psychoanalysis are integral to the practice of psychiatry in Indonesia, primarily because of the charismatic influence of Bachtiar Lubis, who trained in Canada in the early 1960s. Upon his return to Indonesia, Bachtiar Lubis supervised a generation of psychiatrists, including two of this article's authors, who carried on his pedagogical work. The psychodynamic model and treatments have faced obstacles limiting their acceptance in Indonesia, including importing a Western model that has not been culturally adapted to treat patients in the East, the stigma of mental illness in local communities, and the complex comorbidities of persons who seek psychiatric care. Psychodynamic psychotherapy in Indonesia is presently taught in university-based residency programs for eight semesters. A psychodynamic psychotherapy competency-based curriculum was adopted nationwide. The dissemination of psychotherapy knowledge and skills is greatly assisted by an active psychiatric professional association-the Indonesian Psychiatric Association Psychotherapy Section, a member society of the World Federation for Psychotherapy. The authors propose international and regional academic collaborations to maintain enthusiasm among trainees and improve quality of care.

Trainee psychotherapists' emotion recognition accuracy during 1.5 years of psychotherapy education compared to a control group: no improvement after psychotherapy training.

The ability to recognize and work with patients' emotions is considered an important part of most psychotherapy approaches. Surprisingly, there is little systematic research on psychotherapists' ability to recognize other people's emotional expressions. In this study, we compared trainee psychotherapists' nonverbal emotion recognition accuracy to a control group of undergraduate students at two time points: at the beginning and at the end of one and a half years of theoretical and practical psychotherapy training. Emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) was assessed using two standardized computer tasks, one for recognition of dynamic multimodal (facial, bodily, vocal) expressions and one for recognition of facial micro expressions. Initially, 154 participants enrolled in the study, 72 also took part in the follow-up. The trainee psychotherapists were moderately better at recognizing multimodal expressions, and slightly better at recognizing facial micro expressions, than the control group at the first test occasion. However, mixed multilevel modeling indicated that the ERA change trajectories for the two groups differed significantly. While the control group improved in their ability to recognize multimodal emotional expressions from pretest to follow-up, the trainee psychotherapists did not. Both groups improved their micro expression recognition accuracy, but the slope for the control group was significantly steeper than the trainee psychotherapists'. These results suggest that psychotherapy education and clinical training do not always contribute to improved emotion recognition accuracy beyond what could be expected due to time or other factors. Possible reasons for that finding as well as implications for the psychotherapy education are discussed.

Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis in Thailand.

The authors provide an overview of psychiatry and psychodynamic psychotherapy in Thailand, including a discussion of practice patterns, trends, and the cultural context of the delivery of psychotherapy services in this Southeast Asian country. They discuss a way forward in psychodynamic psychotherapy training that is collaborative, self-sustaining, and leads to competence. They address how to culturally adapt psychodynamic psychotherapy and suggest areas of research that would advance the field. Lastly, they discuss psychodynamic pedagogical strategies that may be acceptable and effective in underserved areas.

A guide to support trainee's success in the psychotherapy written case submission.

OBJECTIVE: Many trainees find the Psychotherapy Written Case (PWC) requirement of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists training program challenging. The skills developed and assessed through this experience are critical to the competencies expected of a psychiatrist. However, the process of psychodynamic psychotherapy is often dramatically different from the expectations associated with early clinical placements in acute psychiatric settings. To support trainees in achieving success in the PWC, a guide to the written report was developed based on a review of existing resources and various stakeholder perspectives. CONCLUSIONS: The submission should reflect a training case rather than an idealised or fictionalised story attempting to demonstrate the therapist's competence. The PWC submission must meet the requirements of a general psychiatric report and provide a considered reflection on the experience of the novice therapist.

Senior Resident as Junior Supervisor: Case Report of an Apprenticeship Model for Training Psychotherapy Supervisors.

Psychotherapy supervision is an essential component of graduate medical education in psychiatry. However, most psychotherapy supervisors have never had training specific to supervision, and the requisite skills have received little attention in the literature. The authors of this article describe the first year of a pilot project that was aimed at fostering interest and skill in psychotherapy supervision among senior residents. In this model, a postgraduate year (PGY)-4 resident supervised a PGY-2 resident's psychodynamic psychotherapy while receiving supervisory support from a senior faculty member. Feedback from the two residents and the residency program director was positive. The PGY-2 resident reported benefiting from near-peer supervision. The PGY-4 resident continued to supervise residents after graduation and felt well prepared to assume that role. The residency program continued to use this model after the pilot period. Other training programs can replicate this model to nurture the next generation of psychotherapy supervisors.

Skills and methods that work in psychotherapy: Observations and conclusions from the special issue.

We draw recommendations and conclusions from the articles presented in this special issue and the companion special section in Psychotherapy Research on evidence-based therapist skills and methods. For distal (end-of-treatment) outcome, 10 skills/methods were judged to be demonstrably effective (affirmation/validation, paradoxical interventions, homework, routine outcome monitoring, strength-based methods, emotional regulation, imagery rehearsal therapy and exposure relaxation and rescripting therapy for nightmares, meditation/mindfulness/acceptance, behavioral activation, cognitive restructuring) and four were probably effective (rupture repair, role induction, collaborative assessment methods, chairwork). For intermediate (postsession or midtreatment) outcome, one method was judged to be demonstrably effective (cognitive-experiential dreamwork) and two methods probably effective (paradoxical interventions, homework). For immediate (in-session) outcomes, five skills/methods were judged to be probably effective (in-dialog silences, extended silences, role induction, strength-based methods, and emotion regulation). For the rest of the immediate, intermediate, or distal outcomes for skills/methods, there was either no or insufficient research available upon which to base judgments. Possible harmful effects, diversity considerations, and research limitations are summarized. The article ends with training implications, therapeutic practices, and the formal conclusions of the interorganizational Task Force on Psychotherapy Skills and Methods that Work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

[How Outpatient Psychotherapists Deal with Patients' Traumatic Experiences in Consideration of an Additional Qualification in Trauma Therapy]. / Umgang ambulanter Psychotherapeut*innen mit traumatischen Erfahrungen von Patient*innen unter Berücksichtigung einer traumatherapeutischen Zusatzqualifikation.

OBJECTIVE: Investigation of the differences in dealing with traumatic experiences of patients between psychotherapists with and without further training in trauma therapy or partial qualification. METHODS: Online survey of outpatient psychotherapists (N = 148) on possible obstacles in addressing traumatic experiences of patients and self-reported professional practice. RESULTS: Further training in trauma therapy is associated with a higher level of competence in professional practice and fewer obstacles in addressing traumatic experiences. CONCLUSION: A lower level of competence among psychotherapists without further training in trauma therapy speaks for the need for compulsory trainings. The expansion of low-threshold treatment offers for those affected by traumatic experiences and the dismantling of access barriers is urgently needed.

Informed consent for psychotherapy: Ethical illusion or clinical reality? A survey about psychotherapists' attitudes and practices in Germany.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess clinicians' attitudes and their current clinical practices regarding informed consent for psychotherapy. METHOD: A convenience sample of N = 530 clinicians in Germany (n = 418 licensed psychotherapists and n = 112 postgraduate psychotherapy trainees) took part in an online survey. RESULTS: Most clinicians (84%) reported obtaining informed consent for psychotherapy in their daily routine. However, many psychotherapists felt unsure about satisfactorily fulfilling the legal (63%) and ethical obligations (52%). The two most frequently reported components of information disclosure related to explaining the terms and conditions of psychotherapy (96%) and the psychotherapeutic approach (91%). Providing information about mechanisms of psychotherapy (33%) and the role of expectations (30%) were least practiced. One in five psychotherapists reported not informing clients about potential risks and side effects. A considerable proportion reported concern about inducing anxiety in patients by disclosing information about risks and side effects (52%). CONCLUSIONS: Although obtaining informed consent for psychotherapy seems to be the rule rather than the exception in clinical practice, the quality of its implementation in terms of legal, ethical and clinical demands remains questionable. Training psychotherapists in providing comprehensive informed consent enables informed decision-making and might have a positive influence on treatment expectations and outcomes.

Capacitación no escolarizada en psicoterapia: problemas y perspectivas / Non-school training in psychotherapy: problems and perspectives

Introducción: la capacitación no escolarizada en psicoterapia se define como la enseñanza de esta intervención por fuera de los entornos clínicos universitarios y de la normativa de educación universitaria. Aunque esta forma de estudios es bastante aceptada por psiquiatras y otros profesionales de la salud mental, esta podría no garantizar una adecuada capacitación y certificación. La presente revisión describe las características de la capacitación no escolarizada en psicoterapia en el Perú y aborda los potenciales problemas con la capacitación y certificación. Método: se realiza un análisis de la capacitación no escolarizada de psicoterapia y se la compara con el modelo formativo en psicoterapia de la residencia de Psiquiatría. Resultados: la capacitación no escolarizada en psicoterapia es una modalidad válida de estudios. Sin embargo, su alcance académico y profesional debe ser mejor valorado ya que estos programas podrían no contar con los recursos para reemplazar la capacitación universitaria, y no cuentan con el valor legal para facultar el ejercicio profesional de la psicoterapia de acuerdo a las normativas actuales de la educación universitaria y de licenciamiento profesional. Conclusión: es necesario fortalecer la capacitación de psicoterapia en la residencia de Psiquiatría y la apertura de programas universitarios de postgrado (programas de especialización, maestría o doctorado) para que la capacitación y certificación de psicoterapia sigan los canales formativos y de licenciamiento profesional oficiales.

Introduction: non-school training in psychotherapy is defined as the teaching of this intervention outside of university clinical settings and university education regulations. Although this form of study is widely accepted by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, it may not guarantee adequate training and certification. This review describes the characteristics of non-school training in psychotherapy in Peru and addresses possible problems with training and certification. Method: an analysis of the non-schooled psychotherapy training is carried out and compared with the training model in psychotherapy of the psychiatric residency. Results: non-school training in psychotherapy is a valid study modality. However, their academic and professional scope should be better valued since these programs may not have the resources to replace university training, and they do not have the legal value to license the professional practice of psychotherapy according to current regulations of college education and professional licensing. Conclusion: it is necessary to strengthen psychotherapy training in psychiatry residency and the opening of postgraduate university programs (specialization, master or doctorate programs) so that psychotherapy training and certification follow the official training and professional licensing channels.