Q. Why do you talk about Outcome Informed Treatment, how is it different?
A. Contrary to what many therapists believe, research shows that in successful therapy, clients improve most quickly in the beginning of therapy. Therapists who think you have to feel worse before feeling better are wrong! Additionally, if a person is not being helped early in therapy and the therapist and client actively engage about how to improve it, the treatment outcomes tend to show the most improvement. In other words, really good treatment outcomes happen when the therapist and client actively discuss how to make treatment successful! By tracking treatment progress, we can see if therapy is working, it helps us adjust treatment to make sure its successful and makes treatment more efficient saving you time and money. We firmly believe that helpful, effective treatment requires outcome measurement.
Q. How long does it take for psychotherapy to become effective?
A. Of course it depends on how you define effectiveness or how serious a person’s problems are when they start psychotherapy in addition to other factors. However, people will generally experience significant treatment progress in 7-9 treatment sessions. Often people decide to continue treatment after this to continue their personal growth and research confirms that these people continue to make progress when in successful treatment. This is something that you can actively discus with your treating therapist.
Q. How can I know psychotherapy treatment will work?
A. Psychotherapy’s effectiveness has been researched for well over fifty years and study after study confirms that psychotherapy is remarkably effective. It has been shown to be more effective than many medical treatments, including flu vaccines, most interventions for cardiac problems and asthma treatments. It is as effective as medications for mental disorders without the side effects and the effectiveness lasts longer than with medications.
Q. Is psychotherapy expensive?
A. People often assume that therapy is very expensive. This is based on ideas that were formed when treatment effects were thought to take a long period of time of weekly and sometimes multi-weekly treatment sessions. Research now shows that reliable and clinically meaningful change can occur in as little as ten sessions. If you have a twenty dollar insurance copay, that would mean two hundred dollars. This cost also needs to be considered against the costs of emotional difficulties in terms of substance abuse, missed work, poor relationships with children and spouses, unhealthy life behaviors etc. Additionally, research also suggests that people continue to improve after they leave successful therapy. Our practice strives to help our clients develop the personal skills to live happier healthier lives and the research suggests this can be accomplished.
Q. How long will I be in psychotherapy?
A. It depends on how significant your struggles are when you come into treatment and what are your treatment goals. We do know that in successful treatment people will continue to get better the more treatment they get. However, the fastest progress in is in the early stages of treatment and then progress is more gradual. Some people decide to stop after 7-9 sessions when meaningful progress is accomplished, while others choose to remain in treatment for a bit longer. Rest assured that we will discuss your goals and when you may want to stop coming for treatment.
Have a question we haven’t addressed, here? If so, email us: [email protected]
