Note: This is originally from Frontier Friday, a weekly Substack published, originally released on 01 Mar. 2024

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Psychotherapists on the Frontline

This week, we take a pause from the usual Frontiers Friday (FF) format. (See Maps of Knowledge for where we are going).

Instead, I want to highlight two other therapists who are hard at work in their professional development journey.

1. Jimeoin Muecke’s blog, Deliberate Practice Psych: An Analysis of My Outcomes Stats.
   Back in 2005-06, one of the things I found out from systematically tracking my outcomes at the early stages was that, given I was trained in family systems thinking, I was confident that I would reasonably good with clients who presented with relational issues. It turned out to be a group that I had the poorest outcomes with. The other thing I discovered was that despite feeling that I struggled and sweat the most with working with youths, it was a group that I had the best outcomes with.1
   I’ve since witnessed many therapists and teams embark on a similar process of figuring out “where they are at”. But I got really excited to hear Jimeoin’s efforts in trying to learn from his own evidence because he was willing to share this process of discovery publicly.
   
   I mentioned Jimeoin’s efforts in deliberate practice in FF47. Recently, he has published his outcome stats across 3 years. It’s worth checking out for three reasons:
   – It’s not really about stats,
   – It’s not straight-forward. The process is not linear as others might imagine it to be, and
   – It’s highly revealing.Jimeoin’s outcome data.
   The story is not over. I bet my money that this is going to payoff for Jimeoin and the people he serves.
   Read Jimeoin’s other interesting blogpost, Letting the Paint Dry.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Vivian Baruch’s new article in Skeptic magazine, Psychotherapy Redeemed.
   Vivian wrote a response to a Skeptic magazine article Psychotherapy Reconsidered, by the late Harriet Hall, a medical doctor, science communicator and skeptic.
   
   
   
   
   Vivian said,
   
   On reading her article in Skeptic magazine called “Psychotherapy Reconsidered”, I felt impelled to offer some contrasting considerations, backed by data, to balance her claims that no-one can provide an objective report about the psychotherapy field. She stated that there “…aren’t even any basic numbers,” that we don’t know whether psychotherapy works, that it is not based on solid science, and that there is “…no rational basis for choosing a therapy or therapist.
   …This (comparing treatment models) is a misguided point in Hall’s argument, as she was looking at the differences between treatments rather than between therapists.
   
   Note: Vivian has not only been one of the early adopters of tracking outcomes in her clinical practice, she has also continued to do so for about 2 decades.
   
   This article is made freely available in her blog.
   
   
3. From the Archive: Guest Posts
   Check out our past contributors, offering their perspectives in their professional development journey, as well as how they lead in their organisations:
   
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