Effectiveness

Are you hesitating to make an appointment because you're unsure a therapist can help you?

It’s a fair question. Most therapists believe they’re providing good value, but studies show they tend to overestimate their effectiveness. I wanted to know. I don’t like to waste people’s time and money. And I think anyone seeking therapy services has a right to know something about the therapist's effectiveness.

That’s why I use a research-proven method to track your progress. This method is based on your own assessments, since you’re the best judge of whether you’re getting your desired results. The advantages to this are:

• You can see your own change over time, which is useful and motivating.
• It can help us see what areas of your life and experience would be fruitful to talk about.
• I can see when my clients aren’t making progress, so that we can collaboratively select an approach we think will work better.
• We can gauge how useful I’m being to you and what would make the fit even better.

Reaching your goals depends on many factors, and I can control only some of them. Because of this, it wouldn't be honest for me to offer guarantees. I also hesitate to take credit for my clients’ successes, which are due mostly to their own willingness to work and openness to change. But it does make a difference which therapist you choose – not only because some are more effective than others, but because the relationship between client and therapist is a key success factor.

• 84% of my clients report some improvement over the course of therapy. Compare this to research of outpatient settings where, on average, only about 35% of clients improve.
• Considering my clients who are very unhappy at the start of therapy, 75% experience significant improvement (based on the criteria of the tracking technique). Clients who start an episode of counseling from a place of less distress, tend to see somewhat smaller improvement, simply because there is less room to make big changes. Still, in 67% of my total cases, the amount of improvement is also significant.
• 81% of my clients, return after the first visit. The average rate is 43-80%, depending which study you read. My initial free phone consultation, usually lets me tell whether we’re a good fit.
• The average number of sessions for my clients is 7 (the range is 1-38). I don’t believe in keeping clients indefinitely; I want to do the most good I can, and that means quickly getting people to a place where they can continue to make positive changes without my help.

I’m happy to talk with you if you have questions. If you speak to other therapists, I encourage you to ask whether they use this technique, which is called “client-directed, outcome-informed” (CDOI), Feedback Informed Therapy (FIT), or similar terms. Therapists using this approach, are shown to be generally more effective than those who don’t.