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Special Section, Counselling Psychology: An investigation of the effectiveness of a voluntary sector psychodynamic counselling service
Author(s) -
Archer Ruth,
Forbes Yvonne,
Metcalfe Christopher,
Winter David
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
british journal of medical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 0007-1129
DOI - 10.1348/000711200160499
Subject(s) - attrition , representativeness heuristic , psychodynamics , psychology , counselling psychology , psychotherapist , turnover , affect (linguistics) , voluntary sector , service (business) , clinical psychology , medicine , social psychology , dentistry , communication , economy , management , economics , economic growth
Clients attending a London voluntary sector counselling centre completed assessments pre‐ and post‐psychodynamic counselling and at follow‐up. Although there was a very high attrition rate following initial assessment, this did not appear to affect adversely the representativeness of the sample completing the later assessments. Clients were found to improve in terms of psychological well‐being, control and various other aspects of their lives, and attributed many of the changes to counselling. Counsellors also rated the counselling as effective with most clients, and particularly those who were inner directed, had expectancies favourable towards psychotherapy, had greater perceived control over their lives, attended more sessions, and with whom an interaction/transference approach was taken. Clients with more severe problems showed less improvement in other areas of their lives. There was no difference in the outcome of clients seen by qualified and trainee counsellors.