New Publication: Dekeyser, Prouty & Elliott (2008) Review of Research on Pre-therapy

Entry for 8 March 2008:

Just out in the latest issue of Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies is a review paper I co-authored on research on Pre-Therapy. This article began its life several years ago in a submission to PCEP by Gary Prouty, but subsequently passed through many transformations and revisions to reach its present form, eventually acquiring my doctoral student Mathias Dekeyser of KU Leuven as first author (it’s a chunk of his dissertation) and me as third author for my role of supervising, consulting, effect-size calculation and helping with the writing.

The Pre-therapy research literature is actually pretty sparse, there turned out to be enough to review. Surprisingly, word of the paper has spread through the Pre-therapy Network and even came up in January when we met Mick, Nancy, Sally and I met in London with Tony Roth, Steve Pilling: Catherine Clarke, the service user/carer representative on the PCE Expert Reference Group had caught wind of the impending publication and used its existence to argue for inclusion of Pre-therapy in the core competency work.

Reference: Dekeyser, M., Prouty, G., & Elliott, R. (2008). Pre-Therapy process and outcome: A review of research instruments and findings. Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, 7, 37-55.

Abstract: Pre-Therapy employs contact reflections to stimulate contact behavior in persons experiencing psychosis. We offer a review of Pre-Therapy research instruments and findings. The Pre-Therapy Rating Scale (PTRS; Prouty, 1994) and the Evaluation Criterion for the Pre-Therapy Interview (ECPI; Dinacci, 1997) have been the two most frequently used instruments for the assessment of contact behavior. PTRS scores seem more reliable than ECPI scores, but all manuals need revision. Particular attention is needed for the rating of non-verbal behavior. A preliminary evaluation of the structure of the PTRS indicates that it is two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional. The PTRS and the ECPI can be regarded as measures of communicative contact but also as measures of the meaningfulness of communication. Preliminary outcome studies suggest that pre-post and comparative effect sizes of Pre-Therapy are large for communicative contact, but the number of participants in these studies is generally low, as is the number of systematic case studies.