The authors' aim in the present study was to examine the effects of a brief forgiveness intervention for older adults. The psychoeducational group intervention consists of (a) established core components of previous forgiveness interventions and (b) additional components considering specific needs of older adults. Seventy-eight older adults (mean…

The current study evaluated the efficacy of a single-session brief motivational enhancement (BME) interview to increase treatment compliance and reduce recidivism rates in a sample of 82 recently adjudicated male perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV). Batterer intervention program attendance and completion as well as re-arrest records…

Two studies explored how counselor and client agreement on the therapy alliance, at the beginning of treatment, influenced early session evaluations and symptom change. Unlike prior studies that operationalized alliance convergence as either a profile similarity correlation or a difference score, the present study used polynomial regression and…

The effectiveness of group psychotherapy has been empirically studied and supported over several decades; however, there remains much to understand regarding the specific factors contributing to effective group psychotherapy. The current study uses Kashy and Kenny's (2000) actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) to examine the relationship…

This study examines the effectiveness of bibliotherapy for low sexual desire among women, which is the most frequent sexual concern brought to counselors. Forty-five women responded to an advertisement for participation in a study on low sexual desire and were assigned to either the intervention or the wait-list control group. The intervention…

Many meta-analyses of comparative outcome studies found a substantial association of researcher allegiance (RA) and relative treatment effects. Therefore, RA is regarded as a biasing factor in comparative outcome research (RA bias hypothesis). However, the RA bias hypothesis has been criticized as causality might be reversed. That is, RA might be…

This study sought to assess the association of client- and therapist-rated real relationship with each other and with the outcome of brief psychotherapy. It also aimed to determine whether changes over time in perceptions of the real relationship and increasing convergence between clients' and therapists' ratings of the real relationship were…

Studies of the therapeutic alliance typically use a one-with-many (OWM) design in which each therapist (the one) treats multiple clients (the many). This study used Kenny, Kashy, and Cook's (2006) OWM method to examine the composition of the therapeutic alliance and to analyze the association between alliance and outcome in a sample of 398…

There is a lack of research examining patients' and other group members' agreement about their therapeutic alliance. In the present study, the person-group (P-G) fit model was adopted to predict that the group member symptom reduction will be greater when the group member's and the other group members' perceptions of their alliance to the…

The process of psychotherapy among 16 low-income clients was explored using grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) in order to understand and identify their unique experiences and needs. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 12 women and 4 men who had attended at least 6 sessions of psychotherapy within 6 months of the…

C. E. Hill (2004) recently developed the concept of therapist immediacy to capture discussion by the therapist about the therapeutic relationship that occurs in the here-and-now of a therapy session. This concept has been expanded to include discussion about the therapeutic relationship by both the client and therapist, captured by the term…

This study examined therapist differences in their clients' ratings of their therapists' multicultural competencies (MCCs) as well as tested whether therapists' who were rated as exhibiting more MCCs also had clients who had better therapy outcomes (N = 143 clients and 31 therapists). All clients completed at least 3 sessions. Results demonstrated…

Objective: Various factors contribute to the effective implementation of evidence-based treatments (EBTs). In this study, cognitive processing therapy (CPT) was administered in a Veterans Affairs (VA) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) specialty clinic in which training and supervision were provided following VA implementation guidelines. The…

Prior meta-analyses have found a moderate but robust relationship between alliance and outcome across a broad spectrum of treatments, presenting concerns, contexts, and measurements. However, there continues to be a lively debate about the therapeutic role of the alliance, particularly in treatments that are tested using randomized clinical trial…

The nature of the alliance-outcome relationship is still emerging. This study examined the reciprocal influence of change in alliance to the group and change in urge to restrict in eating-disordered individuals attending a group-based day treatment. Participants (N = 238) were a transdiagnostic or mixed diagnostic sample of eating-disordered…