1.50 CE Credits Available
Achieving Psychotherapy Effectiveness
by Molyn Leszcz, Clare Pain and Jon Hunter
Regardless of orientation, there are several core therapeutic elements that underscore any successful treatment. Discover what they are, and how to leverage them-- complete with lectures and clinical vignettes.
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Therapists spend countless hours training in specific clinical approaches—sometimes at the expense of recalling the very basics of the work. Without diminishing the importance of learning the techniques of CBT, Gestalt, and everything in between, successful therapy has been proven to boil down to a core set of relational tools. In this video, Drs. Molyn Leszcz, Clare Pain, and Jon Hunter take an in-depth look at psychotherapy effectiveness that applies across all therapy models. Through a series of didactic lessons and live vignettes, they synthesize therapy’s most crucial common factors and provide an approach to understanding and fostering the all-important therapeutic alliance.

Here, the three Toronto-based clinicians focus on the field’s staples: the theories, principles, and practices that improve the effectiveness of almost any type of psychotherapy. Focusing on establishing and maintaining a strong working alliance with clients, they cover the building blocks of therapeutic rapport and show how to leverage it through live sessions with Joel, a depressed man estranged from his wife and young daughter, and Katherine, a woman seeking to rediscover meaning decades after her teenage rape. The therapists embody key characteristics that promote a strong alliance, including empathy, interest, and genuineness, and you’ll watch as they continually circle back to the relationship during periods of ambivalence or strain.

Supplemented by accessible didactic segments, this video also outlines critical techniques for maintaining the alliance, such as exploring expectations and goals in the here-and-how, validating the client’s concerns, and developing a shared understanding of their situation. You’ll learn about the role of attachment, transference and countertransference, and trauma in psychotherapy, and see how these theories play out in real time.

This video is a must-have for anyone seeking a core psychotherapy primer or a refresher on effective strategies that work across all methods. For the essential nuts and bolts of therapy, add this title to your library today.

What therapists are saying…

At last! Here is that rarity, a video that actually tells you how to do the job of psychotherapy?laying out the detailed workings of forming a therapeutic alliance, deepening emotional engagement, tactfully tackling trauma, and transforming therapist-client relationship strain into therapeutic opportunity. The accessible, learning-oriented format provides ideal teaching material for all mental health professionals. Simple without being simplistic, demystifying while acknowledging complexity, energizing yet evidence-based, it is destined for a place in every therapist's and would-be therapist's backpack.

--Jeremy Holmes, MD, FRCPsych, School of Psychology, University of Exeter, UK
Psychotherapy Essentials To Go is a truly impressive series of videos. Elevating pragmatics over dogma, it is grounded in the wisdom of front-line psychotherapists who adapt the core principles of empirically supported psychotherapies to flexibly address a myriad of clinical issues. No other series of psychotherapy videos is as skillfully concise and yet thorough. It will quickly become a standard reference for teaching and enhancing clinical competence.

--Zindel V. Segal, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychology in Mood Disorders, University of Toronto–Scarborough; author of The Mindful Way Through Depression
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Regardless of one’s theoretical orientation, there are a handful of common therapeutic elements that underscore any successful treatment. In this video, Drs. Molyn Leszcz, Clare Pain, and Jon Hunter demonstrate psychotherapy’s most essential theories, tools, and strategies that form the core of the therapeutic alliance.

Covering the basic ingredients for psychotherapy, these three Toronto-based clinicians focus on the core concepts and techniques that should live in your tool box. Highlighting the therapeutic alliance and various ways to understand a client’s relational world, they employ both live clinical vignettes as well as rich didactic lessons to explain the structure of a healing context. You’ll learn about therapist qualities that can promote the alliance; how to develop an understanding with your clients about relationships that shaped their internal working models, patterns of attachment, and interpersonal pulls; and how to recognize the potential impact of unresolved trauma and learn how and when to ask about it.

Moreover, they cover the risks and challenges that can lead to negative outcomes, including transference-countertransference dynamics, and illustrate how to both recognize and use these strains as therapeutic opportunities. Finally, they demonstrate how to use mentalizing and metacommunication to help resolve conflicts and expand reflective capacity—both your clients’ and your own.

If you’re looking for a basic psychotherapy primer or a refresher on effective strategies that work across models, this video is a must-watch. Be sure to add this incredible resource to your library.

By watching this video, you will:
  • Learn how to establish and maintain a therapeutic working alliance with clients.
  • Understand the clinical risks and challenges that can lead to negative outcomes.
  • Discover ways to incorporate attachment theory, transference and countertransference, and trauma support into your work.

Length of video: 1:33:13

English subtitles available

Group ISBN-13 #: 978-1-60124-515-1

Molyn Leszcz, MD, FRCPC, DFAGPA, is Professor and Chair (Interim) at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto and the Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Mount Sinai Hospital. His academic and clinical work has focused on broadening the application of psychotherapy within psychiatry. Dr. Leszcz is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and co-chaired their Science to Services Task Force leading to publication of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Group Psychotherapy. With Irvin Yalom, he co-authored the fifth edition of Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (2005). His research has focused on group psychotherapy.

Clare Pain, MD, MSc, FRCPC, DSc (Hons), is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Director of the Psychological Trauma Program at Mount Sinai Hospital, Consultant at the Canadian Center for Victims of Torture, Co-project director of the Toronto-Addis Ababa Collaboration Program. Her clinical focus is on the assessment and treatment of patients, including refugees, who continue to suffer from the effects of psychological trauma.

Jonathan Hunter, MD, FRCPC, is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, where he heads the Division of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. He is Head of Psychosocial Services in the Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre at Mount Sinai Hospital and a founding member of the Collaborative Mental Healthcare Network of the Ontario College of Family Physicians. His clinical and research interests include the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care of cancer patients, the role of early life experience and attachment in adaptation to disease, and the importance of mentalizing in treatment.
 

CE credits: 1.5

Learning Objectives:

  • Explain how to establish and maintain an effective therapeutic alliance
  • Predict clinical risks and negative therapeutic outcomes
  • Apply principles of attachment theory to your trauma work

Bibliography available upon request

This course is offered for ASWB ACE credit for social workers. See complete list of CE approvals here

© 2014

Course Reviewed January 2023

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