BACP Attendance Report
Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) 36th Annual Meeting
22 – 25 June 2005, Montreal, Canada.
SPR is a collection of academics who research counselling and psychotherapy. There
are ‘chapters’ in each country, and when I joined SPR, over a year ago, I became a
member of the UK chapter.
Networking
One of the best things about the conference was, of course, the networking. I shared a
hotel with Mick Cooper (Senior Lecturer, University of Strathclyde), John Mellor
Clark (CORE), Joe Armstrong (Lecturer, University of Abertay), Sue Wheeler
(Professor, University of Leicester), Thomas Schroeder (Clinical Psychologist, Derby
NHS) and Kim Etherington (Lecturer, University of Bristol). Other delegates who I
spent time with included Glenys Parry (Chair, BACP Research Committee), Richard
Evans (Artemis Trust), William West (Reader, University of Manchester), Clare
Lennie and Terry Hanley (Lecturers, University of Manchester) Andrew Reeves
(University of Leicester) (all BACP members), Chris Mace (Consultant Psychiatrist,
University of Warwick), Lynn Gabriel, (Lecturer, York St John University College)
Mike Lucock, (University of Huddersfield,) and others. I met with Mike Lambert and
Bill Stiles (BACP Research Committee) – though briefly, particularly as Mike
Lambert is the new President of SPR. It was also good to re-engage with Margot
Schofield and Jan Grant, International co-hosts at the 10th BACP Annual Research
Conference.
New links
In attending the British Chapter meeting, I met the new President of the Chapter,
Chris Evans, Consultant Psychiatrist at Rampton Hospital, and member of the UKCP
Research Committee. We had a long conversation over lunch, and agreed it would be
useful to strengthen links between the research arms of our respective organisations.
BACP had not been represented at SPR for several years, and I was warmly
welcomed as a BACP person.
Peer review
I need to find out more about the peer review process at SPR. My sense is, and this
has been confirmed informally but not formally, that everything submitted is accepted
as long as it can be fitted into a coherent programme. Papers which do not fit themed
sessions are offered posters. I don’t think anyone is rejected, which is very different
from the BACP Annual Research Conference, and explains why, when we rejected
several papers, authors came back to us with ‘It’s been accepted at SPR, why not at
BACP?’ I need to ask Mike Lambert about the peer review process.
1
The lack of peer review, and the way the conference was themed, meant that some of
the posters were of extremely high quality, as were some of the presentations, and
others were of poor quality.
Sessions attended
John Clarking, Cornell Medical School, New York, gave the Presidential address on
June 22, on ‘Intervention with severe personality pathology: beyond treatment
symptoms’. He also hosted a 07.00 – 08.00 breakfast meeting for new members on
24 Friday which I attended.
On June 23, Mike Lambert and colleagues hosted a plenary with breakfast on
‘Evidence based practices in mental health; a discussion of APA (American
Psychological Association) Policy and Practice’. This was a really interesting
session, about types of evidence that were useful for evaluating counselling and
psychotherapy, and a definition of Evidence Based Practice as ‘The integration of
research evidence with clinical expertise in the context of patient values’. A draft of
the APA’s EBP policy statement can be downloaded from:
http://www.psychotherapyresearch.org/events/montreal2005.html
I next attended a panel on neuroscience, called ‘Translational perspectives on
psychotherapy for depression’. This included three papers on ‘Encoding of
negatively valanced and self referential information in depression’, ‘Treatment
related changes in neural activation: a pilot study of cognitive therapy for
depression’ and ‘A randomised comparison of cognitive therapy and self system
therapy for depression; Testing a translational approach to treatment matching’.
Neuroscience is not an area I know much about, and so I attended this session, in the
same way as I attended a similar session at a previous BPS Conference, to get a sense
of what researchers are doing in this field. As I understand it, researchers are
mapping brain activity and changes in brain activity, in relation to mood change,
targeted therapy and so on.
From 11.15 to 12.45 I listened to a debate on ‘Culture and psychotherapy research
– Sociocultural aspects of mental health and healing’, as I thought it might be
useful background information for the E & D Forum in BACP. It was chaired by
David Orlinsky, University of Chicago, USA
In the afternoon I attended an interesting Quality Mangement Panel on ‘The
implementation of outcome monitoring into clinical practice: communicating
feedback to therapists’, chaired by Mike Lambert. Papers included ‘Monitoring
psychotherapeutic treatments in the Netherlands: first findings’; ‘Effects of
feedback on treatment outcome and efficiency’ and ‘Case discussion in an
internet based peer intervision group’. The main finding is that giving feedback to
therapists on how the client is doing, improves client outcomes. This was one of the
most interesting aspects of the conference, and was discussed through a series of
research papers in a series of panels. The evening poster session (18.30 – 22.00) was
interesting, and included 32 posters!
2
On 24 June I attended a very worthwhile panel on Training/Supervision/
Development, with three British speakers, Sue Wheeler on ‘Supervision and
practitioner well being; does it make a difference’; Chris Mace on ‘Training in
research for psychotherapists; practical solutions for some common dilemmas’
and Andrew Reeves (runner up in the BACP Recognising Achievement in Research
awards) on ‘Training counsellors to integrate suicide risk assessment into the
counselling process: developing and evaluating training resources’, all were
excellent. The UK SPR Chapter meeting followed this session, where Glenys Parry
gave the Chair’s report before handing over the UK Presidency to Chris Evans.
I next dived between parallel sessions to pick up several papers I was interested in
hearing. The first was another session on outcome predictors, with Mike Lambert as
discussant.
The session was entitled ‘Do we all do the same but different?
Outcome management, patient focussed research, practice research networks
and quality assurance: an international perspective’. I heard papers including
‘Using efficacy, effectiveness and survey data to build a more unified knowledge
base for the psychological therapies’ which had Michael Barkham, University of
Leeds, as the main author, but was presented by Bill Stiles, second author, in
Michael’s absence. I also heard a German paper called ‘First steps towards a
feedback model providing therapists with information about the patient’s
progress in treatment’. Once again, feedback was shown to be useful in improving
client outcome.
In the parallel session which I also tried to attend at the same time, on ‘Reflexivity
and ethics in psychotherapy research’ moderated by William West, I managed to
hear ‘Bringing the unspoken into being’ by Lynn Gabriel and ‘Reflexivity using
touch’ by David Tune, York St John College UK. The evening poster session (31
posters) included preview of some posters,
On the last day, Saturday 25, I attended another breakfast plenary on ‘Empirically
supported theories: a neglected facet of the EST debate’ and reflected, with other
UK delegates, on how North Americans dominate the research field in counselling
and psychotherapy, and what a mass of funded research they manage to carry out.
I then chose a session called ‘Quality management, therapy modalities, consumer
perspectives’, as our next BACP Research Conference is on ‘The consumer and
counselling research’. Chris Mace gave another good paper on ‘Will good practice
guidelines promote good practice? A primary study of UK psychotherapists
experience’, as did Mick Cooper on ‘Young people’s attitudes towards a school
based counselling service: willingness to attend, inhibiting factors and facilitating
factors’. The other two papers in the session on ‘Training of intentional reasoning
as therapeutic tools: how can maladaptive indecisiveness be reduced, low activity
levers raised and pathogenic impulsiveness lowered’, by Klaus Rink of
Switzerland, and Joyce Lai Chong Ma’s paper on ‘Perceived treatment
effectiveness of family therapy for Chinese adolesecents suffering from self
starvation in Hong Kong’ were interesting, partly through learning about research
and cultures in other countries.
3
Later that morning I attended a very good report by Mike Lucock, University of
Huddersfield, on ‘A controlled clinical trial of a self help intervention for anxiety
in a routine UK psychological therapies service’. I was also interested to hear a
report of a Cochrane review on ‘Short term psychodynamic psychotherapy for
common mental disorders’ by a Canadian, Allan Abbass. This review should be
available on the Cochrane Library, on the internet, these papers were part of a session
on ‘Brief Therapy’.
Lunch included prizes for delegates, and an excellent presentation by Mike Lambert
on his future role as President of SPR. After lunch, came William West’s session on
‘Spirituality and Psychotherapy’, with papers by Chris Jenkins on ‘A voice
denied’, by Greg Nolan on ‘Supervision of therapy beyond the ‘I-thou’ and by
Dori Yusef on ‘The body as a universal gateway’, which was presented by William
in her absence.
The last session before the Conference Banquet was again on Outcome predictors,
called ‘Decision rules and advanced feedback models in patient focused research:
where are we and where would we like to go’. The discussant was Bill Stiles, and
the papers were ‘Outcome enhancement for non responding clients: a controlled
test of patient and therapist feedback on weekly progress, therapeutic alliance,
readiness for change and social support on session allocation and outcome’, by
Cory Harmon, a student of Mike Lambert’s, who attended the BACP Research
Conference with him. The other paper was ‘The probablity of treatment success,
failure and duration – what we can learn from empirical data’, a Swiss research
paper, based again on Mike Lambert’s work on feedback. The hall was packed, and
it was interesting to learn how the technology and sophistication of the feedback
studies is progressing, particularly in the United States, where clients and counsellors
now have palm tops to feed data directly into a central computer on client progress.
Conclusion
This was a packed conference, with illustrious researchers and some very good
papers, particularly on client feedback research. The abstract booklet is available in
the Research Department, if anyone wants more information about the presentations.
It was great for networking, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend.
The next SPR Conference is being organised by Mick Cooper and will take place at
the University of Edinburgh on 21 – 24 June 2006.
Nancy Rowland
Head of Research
22 -25 June 2005.
LR/SC/AJ/ Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) 36 th Annual Meeting 22 – 25 June 05-edited version 2
4