Mechanism in Psychotherapy
A bridge symbolizes the interpersonal interactions between patients and therapists. At one end of the bridge there are the mechanisms of the patient that influence the therapy, at the other end there are the mechanisms of the psychotherapist. The effectiveness of psychotherapy for various disorders is well documented. At the same time, not all patients benefit equally from therapy. Our working group is investigating which processes take place during psychotherapy and how these processes influence the success of therapy.
In particular, we are interested in how the handling of emotions and interpersonal experience and behavior change during the course of therapy and how this is related to the development of psychological stress symptoms. We are also investigating the extent to which patients (early) experiences of trauma affect therapy-relevant factors and how traumatic experiences influence the course of therapy.
To this end, we analyze diagnostic data from routine therapies at the University Outpatient Clinic for Psychotherapy and combine them with questionnaire surveys, behavioral observations in the laboratory and smartphone surveys in patients everyday lives with several measurements per day (so-called EMA survey). For example, we are investigating how patients differ in their emotion regulation at the beginning of therapy and how therapeutic interventions can be used to improve emotion regulation skills and positively influence the outcome of therapy. We are also investigating how differences in the behavior and experience of patients are related to differences in individual psychological or physiological processes recorded in the laboratory, such as attention control or sympathetic activity, and how these processes change over the course of therapy.
In this way, bridge the gap between laboratory research and the therapy room and contribute to a better understanding of how psychotherapy works. In the long term, this helps to develop new therapeutic interventions or to select the most promising therapeutic interventions for individual patients. Such personalized psychotherapies can improve the success of therapy and make psychotherapies more efficient.
In terms of psychotherapists mechanisms, our working group is interested in the influence of psychotherapists competencies on the therapy process, therapy success and psychotherapists own mental health. In particular, the competence of self-reflection in psychotherapists is the focus of the working group. In cooperation with the University Hospital Ulm Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy III, the self-reflection skills of beginning psychotherapy students through to experienced therapists are being investigated.
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