Does personal therapy predict better trainee effectiveness?

Objectives

The aim of this study was to examine whether the history of personal therapy among therapist trainees predicts their clinical effectiveness in terms of client symptom reduction.

Methods

Two anonymous archived datasets from a longitudinal research project on mental health counselling training in China were used. Both datasets included trainee-reported history of personal therapy and their client-reported symptom levels prior to each counselling session.

Results

Using multilevel modelling, we found that, in Dataset 1, neither of the personal therapy variables (whether trainees had undergone personal therapy nor number of personal therapy hours) significantly predicted trainees' client symptom outcome. Dataset 2, which included whether trainees were satisfied with their personal therapy, showed that more hours of unsatisfactory personal therapy for a trainee were associated with decreased average client symptom improvement, whereas more hours of highly satisfactory personal therapy for a trainee were associated with greater client symptom improvement.

Conclusions

Findings in this study suggested that the association between trainees' personal therapy length and their clinical effectiveness may be moderated by the quality of their personal therapy: Whereas satisfactory personal therapy might be beneficial in the trainee's clinical work, longer unsatisfactory personal therapy was associated with decreased trainee effectiveness. Research limitations and implications for training are discussed.