When Healers Get Too Friendly

By Abigail Zuger
The New York Times - Well
Originally published November 11, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

The incident that it set it off: Dr. Schiff (now 63, an experienced senior clinician) had tangled with an insurer on the phone for two hours before he gave up and handed an impoverished patient $30 to pay for her pain pills. A resident observed the transaction and turned him in. But Dr. Schiff is a proud repeat offender, whose past infractions include helping patients get jobs, giving them jobs himself, offering them rides home, extending the occasional dinner invitation and, yes, once handing over a computer.

He was told physicians should stay away from “random acts of kindness” — an activity that may sound harmless but is quite distinct from the practice of medicine, and has its risks. Patients might get too familiar, expect too much.

The entire story is here.

Low Hopes, High Expectations: Expectancy Effects and the Replicability of Behavioral Experiments

By Olivier Klein and others
Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(6) 572–584
DOI: 10.1177/1745691612463704
http://pps.sagepub.com

This article revisits two classical issues in experimental methodology: experimenter bias and demand characteristics. We report a content analysis of the method section of experiments reported in two psychology journals (Psychological Science and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology), focusing on aspects of the procedure associated with these two phenomena, such as mention of the presence of the experimenter, suspicion probing, and handling of deception. We note that such information is very often absent, which prevents observers from gauging the extent to which such factors influence the results. We consider the reasons that may explain this omission, including the automatization of psychology experiments, the evolution of research topics, and, most important, a view of research participants as passive receptacles of stimuli. Using a situated social cognition perspective, we emphasize the importance of integrating the social context of experiments in the explanation of psychological phenomena. We illustrate this argument via a controversy on stereotype-based behavioral
priming effects.

The entire article is here.

6 Practice Recommendations for Reducing Premature Termination in Therapy

Practice recommendations for reducing premature termination in therapy.

Swift, Joshua K.; Greenberg, Roger P.; Whipple, Jason L.; Kominiak, Nina

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 43(4), Aug 2012, 379-387.

 

Abstract

 

Premature termination from therapy is a significant problem frequently encountered by practicing clinicians of all types. In fact, a recent meta-analytic review (J. K. Swift & R. P. Greenberg, 2012, Premature discontinuation in adult psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. doi:10.1037/a0028226) of 669 studies found that approximately 20% of all clients drop out of treatment prematurely, with higher rates among some types of clients and in some settings. Although this dropout rate is lower than previously estimated, a significant number of clients are still prematurely terminating, and thus further research toward a solution is warranted. Here we present a conceptualization of premature termination based on perceived and anticipated costs and benefits and review 6 practice strategies for reducing premature termination in therapy. These strategies include providing education about duration and patterns of change, providing role induction, incorporating client preferences, strengthening early hope, fostering the therapeutic alliance, and assessing and discussing treatment progress.

 

1. Help clients develop realistic expectations of treatment duration and recovery expectations at the beginning of treatment.

 

2. Utilize role induction prior to starting an intervention.

 

3. Pay attention to patient preferences, such as active versus passive therapist or whether homework will be assigned.

 

4. Instill a sense of hope that treatment will work

 

5. Foster the therapeutic alliance

 

6. Routinely monitor treatment outcomes.

 

Thanks to Ken Pope for this information.

 

The entire article can be found here.