Saul Rosenthal, PhD

Psychotherapy Metrics. Helpful or a Waste?

In the article What your therapist doesn’t know, author and psychologist Tony Rousmaniere argues that therapists should incorporate psychotherapy metrics into our practice. In general, I very much agree with him, although it’s a complex topic with no easy answers. Rousmaniere, while advocating for metric-based treatment, does a good job laying out both pros and cons. On the one hand, more and more fields are utilizing metrics as feedback to alter and improve performance. On the other hand, psychotherapy is an extraordinarily complex and individualized piece of work that might not lend itself to influence by statistical analysis.

While there are plenty of reasons to praise and criticize the article (just read through the article’s comments to get a sense), there are a couple of points that really stick out to me.

Speaking as a dataphile, the idea of utilizing objective information to improve my clinical work is fantastic. However, I’m not quite diving into the world of metric-based treatment right away. There are a couple of problems I have with it, particularly in the context of psychotherapy.

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Saul R March 21st, 2017

Posted In: Psychotherapy