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Welcome to SPRUK Leeds 2022
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Psychotherapy practice needs to be based on research evidence. Fostering the development of an evidence base for psychotherapy and disseminating findings to practitioners is a mission of SPR. Moreover, practitioners have a central role in generating evidence for practice and face challenges in how research evidence is used to ensure effective, ethical practice.
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But what counts as evidence and how is evidence used? SPR UK has been raising some of these critical questions, for instance in the context of the ongoing stakeholder campaign calling on the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to conduct a ’full and proper revision’ of its 2009 guidelines on the Recognition and Management of Depression in Adults.
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This one-day conference aims to bring together in a hybrid (in-person and online) event researchers, practitioners, teachers and students across different career stages who are interested in the current state of evidence for practice. As per SPR tradition the programme includes a range of panels, brief papers, structured disucssions and poster presentations and a unique opportunty to hear about and consider latest research developments in the field of psychotherapy, a wide range of diagnostic and problem categories and a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches. Presentations will draw on a diversity of research methods including qualitative and quantitative studies, single case research, process and outcome studies, meta-analyses, methodological contributions, research on psychotherapy measures, literature reviews and so forth.
The conference will be include presentations by our two internationally renowned key note speakers, and a full program of presentations and opportunities to engage with colleagues. The day will end with a closing plenary during which we will engage in a wider discussion on our theme, first among panellists and then with all attendees.
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The key note speakers
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Dr Jocelyn Catty is Research Lead for the Professional Doctorate in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Tavistock Centre, and Principal Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist in Bromley CAMHS. She is Senior Research Fellow on the Waiting Times project led by Exexter University and Birkbeck College and funded by the Wellcome Trust. She was previously Senior Research Fellow in Mental Health at St George's, University of London, where she published widely in empirical mental health research. She has research interests in the therapeutic relationship and temporality in relation to adolescent psychotherapy, and is a co-editor of the Tavistock Clinic Series.’
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Dr Catty's keynote presentation is Evidence for child psychotherapy, child psychotherapists in research: thoughts on complexity and interdisciplinarity in research, practice and training
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Over 20 years ago, the late Phil Richardson described the anxieties of many psychotherapists that “in its simplest form this [quantitative] approach to evidence-based practice might seem to imply that the complexity of the individual case could be reduced to a single unitary theme” (2001). In celebrating what child psychotherapy research has achieved today, I argue, first, that it was only by addressing such anxieties head-on that large-scale studies were able to take place at all and, second, that it was by embracing methodology that had been developed within other fields on “complex interventions” – in short, by collaborating - that they have been able to produce the kind of multi-layered and meaningful evidence that now exists: in particular, the IMPACT study of child psychoanalytic psychotherapy and CBT for adolescent depression (Goodyer et al, 2017). How such evidence is taken up, however, is not straightforward, as the complex inter-relationship between the IMPACT study and the NICE Guideline on Child and Adolescent Depression illustrates.
Turning towards the future, I then consider the role of research at the heart of child psychoanalytic psychotherapy training in the UK today, describing the gains this brings and the dilemmas it poses, whether doctoral work is undertaken within clinical services or contributes to larger-scale studies. Yet I also draw attention to a serious impediment to development: the dearth of research opportunities for our research-literate practitioners. Finally, I turn to inter-disciplinary research as one path forwards, with the potential to bring psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic thinking into dialogue with the wider cultural, academic and clinical worlds, as well as with policy-makers. I here describe the Waiting Times study (https://waitingtimes.exeter.ac.uk/), a psychosocial, medical humanities project that examines what it means to wait in and for healthcare by examining lived experiences, representations and histories of delayed and impeded time.
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Professor Michael Barkham is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He has been conducting research into the psychological therapies since the mid-1980s and is committed to utilising trial methodologies and large practice-based datasets in service of improving patient choice and outcomes. He attended his first international SPR meeting in 1979 and was the recipient of the 2019 International Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) Senior Distinguished Research Career Award. Together with Wolfgang Lutz and Louis Castonguay, he is editor of the 7th edition of Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (2021).
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Professor Barkham's keynote presentation is Psychological therapies outcome research: Challenges, comments, reflections, and directions
Since the publication of Smith and Glass’ (1977) ‘Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies’ in the American Psychologist, it can be argued that research in the field has made either great progress or very little progress in improving patient outcomes. The aim of this presentation is to identify the challenges facing the field and provide comments, reflections, and offer some possible directions for research and how it is conducted in light of a selective review of the current status following publication of the 7e of Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (2021) and also in response to the 3e of the consultation process regarding the NICE clinical guideline for depression. Attention will focus on selected challenges related to research practice and the delivery of psychological therapies including (1) the relationship between pragmatic trials and research yielding practice-based evidence, (2) the role of routine outcome monitoring in promoting data-informed therapy, and (3) the matching of patients, therapists, and treatments. Comments and reflections will be made in relation to each of these and associated areas with the purpose of suggesting possible future directions that support a realignment of research strategy within the UK. The yield of such an effort would be the potential for offering evidence better suited to informing and guiding practitioners regarding decision-making pertaining to psychological therapy assignment and treatment for individual patients in need of psychological interventions. But such efforts are located in the context of the need to scale up interventions in order to meet the ever-increasing demand for psychological therapies.
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