Grant: Project Grant

Several types of psychotherapy are equally effective to treat mental disorders. However, many patients remain symptomatic after treatment. Our team demonstrated that a professional development training program to improve psychotherapists' skills at identifying and repairing therapeutic alliance tensions resulted in improved therapeutic alliance (an important therapeutic ingredient) and patient mental health outcomes. However, we delivered this training program by conventional in-person workshops which limited access by psychotherapists living outside large urban centres. Further, post-study interviews with therapists suggested that cultural/diversity factors complicated the therapeutic alliance. We propose to test the effectiveness and acceptability of a virtually-delivered training program to psychotherapists in urban, rural, and remote areas to improve their capacity to identify and repair problems in the therapeutic alliance, including tensions related to patient diversity. We will also examine how acceptable the virtually-delivered training is to psychotherapists, and whether they would use such training in their practice. Participants in the study will be community-based licensed psychotherapists and their patients. Patient mental health outcomes, therapeutic alliance, and diversity issues will be assessed. Our team developed Canada's largest psychotherapy practice-research network and has expertise in clinical trials, diversity, and education research of virtual training. State of the art training is often out of the reach of therapists who live outside of urban centres, and the effectiveness and acceptability of providing training virtually is not well-studied in mental health care. This study will improve psychotherapists' effectiveness at managing the therapeutic alliance and issues related to diversity, and will improve patient mental health outcomes thus promising to reduce the burden of mental illness among Canadians.