Effectiveness Of Humanistic Psychotherapy For Patients With Abnormal Psychology: Impact Of Therapist Gender And Severity Of Illness

Psychotherapeutic Approaches for Abnormal Psychology

Discuss about the Abnormal Psychology for Therapist Gender and Severity of Illness.

The Study will examine whether the gender of the Therapist and the Severity of the Illness influences the effectiveness of Humanistic Psychotherapy provided to patients with Abnormal Psychology. Data will be collected from Mental Health Institutes regarding the severity of disorder a patient is suffering from and the gender of the patients.60-100 patients of the age group 18-60 years who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were included for the study. Effectiveness of humanistic Psychotherapy will be measured by recovery progress of the patients and any significant correlation between the two concerned parameters will be measured. The effectiveness of the psychotherapy can be measured by interviewing the patients regarding therapy experiences and their perception of benefits from the therapeutics process. Process type strategies will be utilised for quality assessment of the concerned psychotherapy. Provider and consumers are surveyed in this process and medical records are obtained. This study can infer about any difference in effectiveness due to the gender of the Therapist and severity of the Illness, which can help provide a more person-centred care by evaluating the personal needs of the patient. 

Psychotherapy has been widely practised for patients with Abnormal Psychology or Mental health disorders. This therapeutic approach is mostly utilised for patients with depression, anxiety disorders, stress disorders, personality disorders, history of drug abuse so on and so forth. Various types of psychotherapies are found to be effective. Cognitive Psychotherapy, Behavioural Psychotherapy and Humanistic Psychotherapy are most widespread among the psychotherapy techniques (Sue & Zane, 2009, August). Studies show that gender of the therapist can and does effect psychotherapy provided to a patient; although the effects are complex and “sex-bias” is not a justified term in this regard (Barker & Pistrang, 2015). Structured physiological therapies have proved to be beneficial for Patients with severe and recurrent bipolar disorders (Scott et al., 2006). Previously the role of gender on group-cognitive behavioural treatment has been studied (Watson & Nathan, 2008).Humanistic Therapy offers a holistic and humanistic approach for providing intervention to patients (Schneider, 2015). It focuses on the fact that human beings are capable of taking control of their own lives.         Humanistic Therapy is increasingly common in the field of Psychology as it can help a patient understand his/her own self. They can achieve a perception about their believes and feelings and even reach self-actualization through Humanistic Psychotherapy (Patterson & Joseph, 2007).Humanistic Psychotherapy is client/person cantered, constructive, and emotion-focused and focusing oriented. Meta analyses show that patients who are provided with therapies, which follow humanistic psychological standards, have significantly high post therapy gains and on average experience considerable change over time compared to the patients who did not receive such treatments (Elliott, 2002).Empathy of therapists is considered to be the key factor for effective humanistic therapies in most studies. Effectiveness of various therapies on severe mental disorders has been studied previously (Leichsenring & Leibing, 2007).       

Humanistic Psychotherapy and Outcomes

Few studies have been conducted regarding the issues of Humanistic Psychotherapies compared to other modes of therapeutic interventions. Gender factors and severity illness have been addressed in several studies in concern with cognitive and behavioural studies. Hence, the scopes of previous studies have been limited by the selection of the specific study and the dependent variables chosen. 

Studies have shown thatthe effectiveness of psychotherapies depend on several factors that include characteristics and behaviour of therapist, cooperation of family and even external life events. Several techniques are prevalent; each sufficing the patient centred specific requirements. This study focuses specifically on Humanistic Psychotherapy and how its effectiveness is related to the gender of the provider and the severity of the disorder of the receiver. It is hypothesized that the gender of the therapist will have negative influence on the outcomes experienced by a patient undergoing Humanistic Psychotherapy. It is also hypothesized that the severity of the mental health disorder suffered by the patient has direct association with Humanistic Psychotherapy. 

Participation of around 60-100 patients are desired for the purpose of this study. The participants will be chosen based on certain inclusion criteria. Patients suffering from anxiety, depression and stress of varying severity will be chosen who have been under Humanistic Psychotherapeutic interventions for at least six months. The efficacy of the therapy will be evaluated by interviewing the patients regarding the same and by recording medical records from the hospital databank. The selected group must age between 18-60 years of age. Participants will be selected from various certified health care institutions of Australia. Demographic information and socioeconomic status of the patient needs to be collected to standardize the effectiveness outcomes. A near even distribution of male and female therapist is desirable. Prior permissions were obtained from the target group and the concerned organizations to avoid ethical issues.

The independent variable of therapist gender and severity of the disorder will be recorded from relevant data collected from the medical reports of the patients and the personal details of the therapists. This will be a quasi-experimental study design. Participates will be asked to report their self-experience throughout the period of the study.

Questionnaires will be used to get the desired information about the effectiveness of the therapy from the patients (Shedler, 2012). Question will be framed to gain information regarding patient experience, the feeling of comfort he/she experiences and the connected and security with the therapist. Progress in mental health as reported by the therapist and from various medical parameters will also be collected. The independent variable of therapist gender can easily be obtained from the personal details of the therapists. The other independent variable of severity of illness can be obtained from the records of case history of the patients.

Gender of Therapists and Psychotherapeutic Outcomes

With required permission from the institution authority, the study participants and the therapists, information about the gender of the therapists and the severity of illness of the patients will be collected. The purpose and significance of the study will clearly be explained to the patients and their families. The patients will be asked to share their experience regarding empathy of the therapist towards the patient and relatedness he/she feels with the therapist. They will be asked about how capable the therapist is in terms of comprehending the seriousness of the issues suffered by the patient. The patients were also asked to comment about the compassion of the therapist. 

The response from the questionnaires will be evaluated by the standard scaling methods. Measures from patients regarding the various parameters that determine the efficacy of the Humanistic Therapy will be estimated from the reports of the interviews and questionnaires. The independent variables, gender of the therapist and the severity of the illness as obtained from the mentioned methods were then related to the dependent variable of Therapy efficacy. If the proposed hypothesis is proved true, discrepancies in the effectiveness of the psychotherapy will be observed in case of male and female therapists as well as the level of severity of the disorder. It is expected that the questions will provide clear inconsistency regarding the perception of patients on therapist gender. It is also expected that with increase in the degree of disorder severity the effectiveness of therapy will shoe a negative relationship.

If no significant association is found between the dependent and independent variables of the study, it can be concluded that no inconsistency is prevalent in terms of therapeutic outcomes. Moreover, the hypothesis that therapist gender and severity of the disorder are determining factors of humanistic therapy for mental health disorder patients will be discarded. Further studies are required to ensure the validity of the study results.

Previous researches have studied the matching of clients and therapists in terms of gender and evaluated if outcomes of therapies have any direct relationship with such parameters (Bhati, 2014). Results have showed that there is a female-effect across all stages of therapy. Female therapists have a greater influence both male and female clients in terms of therapeutic outcomes (Blow, Timm & Cox, 2008). Psychotherapy has been proved more effective than pharmacological intervention in patients with Serious Mental Illness like Anxiety disorders, Severe depression and Stress disorders (Wampold et al., 2005).

Severity of Disorder and Psychotherapeutic Outcomes

Significant difference in outcomes may be due to several personal attributes of the therapist. His/her understanding of several psychological illnesses and critical thinking regarding person-centred care can be the determining factors for the results that will be obtained. No significant difference may be observed if the therapist has unambiguous understanding of the requirements of the patients and ample experience (Kim, Wampold & Bolt, 2006) in how to make patients with critical psychological needs feel comfortable and secure about sharing their personal problems.

The proposed study has some limitations. The variables are not under control the researcher to be manipulated. The study design is quasi-experimental and no control group will be evaluated for comparison with the therapeutic intervention group.

If the study successfully provides any significant relation between the dependent and independent variables, it can be applied in daily life practice to gain beneficial outcomes for the patient and help improve the process of mental health recovery.

However, further research focusing on humanistic psychotherapies and the factors that influence the same needs to be studied in the future. Long-term observations of therapeutic interventions are required to provide valid adequate inferences regarding the topic of interest. 

References

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Barker, C., & Pistrang, N. (2015). Research methods in clinical psychology: An introduction for students and practitioners. John Wiley & Sons.

Bhati, K. S. (2014). Effect of client-therapist gender match on the therapeutic relationship: an exploratory analysis. Psychological reports, 115(2).

Blow, A. J., Timm, T. M., & Cox, R. (2008). The role of the therapist in therapeutic change: does therapist gender matter?. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 20(1), 66-86.

Elliott, R. (2002). The effectiveness of humanistic therapies: A meta-analysis.

Kim, D. M., Wampold, B. E., & Bolt, D. M. (2006). Therapist effects in psychotherapy: A random-effects modelling of the National Institute of Mental Health Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program data. Psychotherapy Research, 16(02), 161-172.

Leichsenring, F., & Leibing, E. (2007). Psychodynamic psychotherapy: a systematic review of techniques, indications and empirical evidence. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 80(2), 217-228.         

Patterson, T. G., & Joseph, S. (2007). Person-cantered personality theory: Support from self-determination theory and positive psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47(1), 117-139.

Schneider, K. J. (2015). Existential–Humanistic Psychotherapy. The Professional Counselor’s Desk Reference, 201.

Scott, J. A. N., Paykel, E., Morriss, R., Bentall, R., Kinderman, P., Johnson, T., … & Hayhurst, H. (2006). Cognitive–behavioural therapy for severe and recurrent bipolar disorders. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 188(4), 313-320.

Shedler, J. (2012). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. In Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Research (pp. 9-25). Humana Press.

Sue, S., & Zane, N. (2009, August). The role of culture and cultural techniques in psychotherapy: A critique and reformulation. In Asian American Psychological Association Convention, Aug, 1985, Los Angeles, CA, US; The first author presented an earlier version of this article as an invited address at the aforementioned conference. (No. 1, p. 3). Educational Publishing Foundation.

Wampold, B. E., Minami, T., Tierney, S. C., Baskin, T. W., & Bhati, K. S. (2005). The placebo is powerful: estimating placebo effects in medicine and psychotherapy from randomized clinical trials. Journal of clinical psychology, 61(7), 835-854.

Watson, H. J., & Nathan, P. R. (2008). Role of gender in depressive disorder outcome for individual and group cognitive–behavioral treatment. Journal of clinical psychology, 64(12), 1323-1337.