Heat and skill of therapists improve treatment success – Heilpraxis

Psychotherapy: negative expectations can be changed

negatives outcome expectations psychological treatments often lead to unfavorable treatments Results of treatment. Therefore, therapists must respond to people being treated’s expectations of negative outcomes and, ideally, convert them into expectations of more positive outcomes. can help heat and skill the therapist, as a new study shows.

Pessimistic expectations about the usefulness of psychotherapy can interfere with the success of treatment. But how can psychotherapists change these concerns? The research team of Professor Winfried Rief and Anna Seewald from the University of Marburg has looked into this question. Their results were published in the journal “Clinical Psychological Sciences“published.

Changing negative therapeutic expectations

“The warmth and skill of therapists is crucial in changing negative therapy expectations”psychologist Anna Seewald from the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Marburg sums up the result in a Message together.

In a online study the scientist and professor Winfried Rief induced negative expectations in the study participants: they listened to a skeptical patient who spoke about the weakness of the studies and the low effectiveness of psychotherapy in coping with stress.

In the next step, the subjects then watched a video in which a therapist gave a patient positive information about the efficiency mediated by stress psychotherapy. The emotional warmth of the communication and the radiance of the therapist’s skill were varied.

Not only relevant for psychotherapy

After the videos, participants expressed their expectations about whether psychotherapy could help them. The initially negative expectation was better changed when the therapist conveyed a high level of skill in the video and a high heat rayon.

“This result may be useful for therapists Code of conduct emphasize when confronting patients with negative expectations”explains Anna Seewald.

Professor Ulrike Bingel, neurologist at the University Hospital Essen and spokesperson for the collaborative research center SFB/TRR 289 “Treatment Expectation”, points out in a Messagethat these research results are not only relevant for psychotherapy, but also of great importance in other fields of medicine, “because negative expectations, fears and worries play a major role in many patients with acute, chronic or severe illnesses”. (ad)