Clinical Trials Logo

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

NCT number NCT04511754
Other study ID # IRB20062468B3
Secondary ID
Status Completed
Phase N/A
First received
Last updated
Start date December 9, 2020
Est. completion date June 22, 2021

Study information

Verified date August 2022
Source Wayne State University
Contact n/a
Is FDA regulated No
Health authority
Study type Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

Many people seek psychotherapy to alleviate symptoms related to trauma and stressful conflicts, and many psychotherapy approaches aim to help people process trauma and conflicts through eliciting client disclosure of these experiences and activating related emotions. However, many therapists avoid implementing such approaches because they are emotionally challenging for both the client and the therapist, and because therapists lack direct training in specific skills related to eliciting client disclosure and working with emotions. This suggests that providing therapists with a training experience that is experiential, includes direct supervision and feedback, and addresses therapists' reservations and anxieties may be an important approach to increase therapist skills in disclosure elicitation and emotional activation. This is a randomized trial that will test two methods of training (experiential vs. standard) of master's level psychotherapy students in specific therapeutic skills aimed at increasing trainees' emotional awareness and self-regulation and reducing trainee anxiety and avoidance of eliciting disclosure and working with emotions in psychotherapy. In the standard training condition, the trainee will receive a lecture about the skills including rationale and research background, examples, and opportunities to ask questions. In the experiential training condition, the trainees will receive information about the skills with examples and will have opportunity to practice using short video clips of actors portraying clients. The trainees will be asked to respond to the short clips using the skills they learned, and a trainer will process the trainees' reactions after they respond to each practice video clip and will provide feedback to the trainees about their performance on the practice. Findings from this study will provide information about the feasibility of training in specific disclosure elicitation and emotional activation therapy skills, and will provide information about whether or not live supervision will lead to greater improvement in the targeted skills compared to entirely standard training.


Description:

Experiences of trauma and stressful conflicts are common, with most adults in the United States reporting experiences of at least one traumatic event in their lifetimes. Experiences of stressful events vary, and may include war-related trauma, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, witnessing violence or substance use in the household, and emotional and physical neglect. Exposure to traumatic and stressful events has been linked to adverse physical and psychological health outcomes, impaired functioning, and substantial reductions in quality of life. In addition to trauma exposure, many individuals experience interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts such as experiences of social rejection, struggles with intimacy or autonomy in relationships, shameful secrets, and perfectionism. Such conflicts are also associated with poor psychological and physical health outcomes. Experiences of trauma and stressful conflicts often underlie many psychological problems that lead individuals to seek psychotherapy. Many psychotherapy approaches aim to help people disclose and process difficult experiences and activate and experience their emotions, and research suggests that such psychotherapies improve psychological and physical health. For example, written emotional disclosure (or expressive writing) is a therapeutic approach in which a person is asked to write repeatedly about private stressful experiences and avoided emotions. Another psychotherapy approach, Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE), is designed to help clients approach feared and avoided trauma-related material including memories, thoughts, emotions, and real-life situations. Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) is an approach that helps clients acknowledge and engage with avoided emotions and psychological conflicts and express blocked emotions. One variant of STPP has been used to specifically treat affect phobia, a phobia of experiencing or expressing certain emotions. Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) borrows from STPP, exposure therapy, expressive writing, and other emotion-focused approaches and aims to help people disclose stressful experiences and emotional conflicts and experience and express their emotions related to stressful situations. The aforementioned psychotherapy approaches have shown benefits for a range of populations and psychological and physical health outcomes; however, this therapeutic work can be challenging, and therapists may often avoid implementing such approaches and skills. Eliciting client disclosure and emotional activation can be especially challenging for novel therapists who may avoid directly inquiring about clients' traumas and conflicts and may experience difficulty tuning into and working with clients' emotions. These barriers are often observed in the implementation of exposure-based approaches, which are underutilized in day-to-day clinical practice. Barriers to therapist implementation of exposure-based techniques include lack of adequate training, the belief that exposure is likely to lead to an increase in symptoms or problems in therapy, and lack confidence in one's ability to handle a range of client emotional reactions. Comprehensive training experiences are needed to address therapist-centric barriers to utilization of disclosure elicitation and emotional activation skills and to increase therapist self-efficacy related to such skills. Research suggests that entirely didactic training methods, such as reading manuals or watching lectures and training videos, are insufficient to lead to therapist behavior change. Several studies have highlighted the importance of supervision and supervisor feedback in increasing therapist knowledge, proficiency, and retention of therapeutic skills. Additionally, some researchers have highlighted the importance of key components of skill acquisition, such as repetitive or deliberate practice of specific skills through role plays and simulations, personalized performance feedback, and experiential/reflective training approaches. Therapist self-reflection and self-regulation practices have also been highlighted as an important component of skill training, as such practices can help therapists tune into and regulate their own in-session reactions and emotions. Several studies have also aimed to address, through training, therapists' anxiety, affect phobia (fear of intense emotional experiences), and the desire to avoid emotionally challenging therapeutic moments. These studies have highlighted the importance of increasing trainees' emotional awareness, helping trainees manage their reactions to client disclosure and emotional expression, and targeting and challenging clinician anxieties and concerns during psychotherapy skill training. Overall, research suggests that efforts to improve therapist utilization of disclosure elicitation and emotional activation skills must not only provide "how to" training, but also directly address therapists' reservations, fears, and concerns related to disclosure and emotions. This suggests that providing therapists with a training experience that is experiential, includes practice, direct supervision and feedback, and addresses therapists' reservations and anxieties may be an important approach to increase therapist skills in disclosure elicitation and emotional activation. The current study aims to test the effects of an experiential, supervised training approach on therapy trainees' disclosure elicitation and emotional activation skills, and trainees' self-efficacy and affect phobia (fear of emotions), compared to a standard, didactic training approach. It is hypothesized that the experiential training condition will result in greater improvement in performance of the targeted skills and in higher participant ratings of satisfaction with the training compared to the standard training condition. It is also hypothesized that the experiential training condition will result in a greater increase in trainees' self-efficacy and greater decrease in trainees' affect phobia compared to the standard training condition.


Recruitment information / eligibility

Status Completed
Enrollment 102
Est. completion date June 22, 2021
Est. primary completion date June 22, 2021
Accepts healthy volunteers Accepts Healthy Volunteers
Gender All
Age group 18 Years and older
Eligibility Inclusion Criteria: - Graduate students in mental health-related graduate programs (e.g., social work, counseling, and clinical psychology). Exclusion Criteria: - None

Study Design


Related Conditions & MeSH terms


Intervention

Behavioral:
Experiential Psychotherapy Skill Training
The Experiential Training intervention will include components of training not usually included in standard clinical training experiences; such components include opportunities for deliberate practice of the skills trained, live supervision and feedback, and discussion with a trainer focused on the skills taught and the trainees' performance.
Standard Psychotherapy Skill Training
Standard didactic training with research support, examples, and opportunities to ask questions.

Locations

Country Name City State
United States Wayne State University Department of Psychology Detroit Michigan

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor Collaborator
Mark A. Lumley

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type Measure Description Time frame Safety issue
Primary Change in targeted therapy skills from baseline to post-training and 1-month follow-up Participant will respond brief pre-recorded videos of actors portraying clients in therapy, and the participant responses will be recorded and coded for skills acquisition using a structured protocol. Immediately Post-Training and 1-month follow-up
Secondary Satisfaction with training content and satisfaction with training learning Satisfaction with Training Scale and Satisfaction with Learning Scale (participant ratings of 1 to 6; higher scores indicate higher satisfaction) Immediately Post-Training and 1-month follow-up
Secondary Change in self-efficacy from baseline to 1-month follow-up Counselor Activity Self-Efficacy Scales; (0 to 9; higher values = higher self-efficacy) 1-month follow-up
Secondary Change in affect phobia from baseline to 1-month follow-up Affect Phobia Test; (1 to 5; lower values = higher affect phobia) 1-month follow-up
Secondary Change in anxiety from baseline to 1-month follow-up PROMIS Anxiety Scale; (1 to 5; higher values = greater anxiety) 1-month follow-up
Secondary Change in depression from baseline to 1-month follow-up PROMIS Depression Scale; (1 to 5; higher values = greater depression) 1-month follow-up
See also
  Status Clinical Trial Phase
Recruiting NCT04848376 - Post-Market Clinical Follow-up Study of A-SPINE's Products
Terminated NCT03781817 - Intranasal Versus Intravenous Ketamine for Procedural Sedation in Children With Non-operative Fractures Phase 4
Completed NCT04342416 - Using a Brief Visuospatial Interference Intervention to Reduce Intrusive Memories Among Trauma Exposed Women N/A
Recruiting NCT04856449 - DBT Skills Plus EMDR for BPD and Trauma N/A
Completed NCT04356963 - Adjunct VR Pain Management in Acute Brain Injury N/A
Completed NCT05669313 - The Effects of Hypothermia and Acidosis on Coagulation During Treatment With Rivaroxaban Measured With ROTEM
Active, not recruiting NCT03622632 - Pilot Study to Measure Uric Acid in Traumatized Patients: Determinants and Prognostic Association
Recruiting NCT04725721 - Testing FIRST in Youth Outpatient Psychotherapy N/A
Active, not recruiting NCT05530642 - An Augmented Training Program for Preventing Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries Among Diverse Public Safety Personnel N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT05649891 - Checklists Resuscitation Emergency Department N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT03696563 - FreeO2 PreHospital - Automated Oxygen Titration vs Manual Titration According to the BLS-PCS N/A
Withdrawn NCT03249129 - Identification of Autoantibodies and Autoantigens in the Cerebrospinal Fluid of Patients With Spinal Cord Trauma
Completed NCT02240732 - Surgical Tourniquets and Cerebral Emboli N/A
Completed NCT02227979 - Effects of PURPLE Cry Intervention N/A
Withdrawn NCT01169025 - Fentanyl vs. Low-Dose Ketamine for the Relief of Moderate to Severe Pain in Aeromedical Patients N/A
Recruiting NCT01812941 - Evaluation of Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Severe Burn and Trauma Patients N/A
Completed NCT03112304 - Child STEPS for Youth Mental Health in Maine Sustainability N/A
Completed NCT01475344 - Fibrinogen Concentrate (FGTW) in Trauma Patients, Presumed to Bleed (FI in TIC) Phase 1/Phase 2
Completed NCT01201863 - Neuroendocrine Dysfunction in Traumatic Brain Injury: Effects of Testosterone Therapy Phase 4
Completed NCT01210417 - Trauma Heart to Arm Time N/A