Tag Archives: First Session

Instilling Hope in a First Session

I’m starting a new placement next month, and I want to know how to be as helpful as possible in my client sessions. How can I handle the first session so they are likely to want to come back and continue therapy?

Starting your first placement is a big step and one that most clinicians approach with some amount of anxiety as well as excitement. It’s a good idea to start by thinking about the first session with clients and how to engage them from the beginning. There is a lot to do in a first session–getting informed consent, establishing a therapeutic alliance, following the client’s story, beginning an assessment, and responding to the client’s wishes and goals–and chapter 3 of my book covers this topic. Communicating empathy and understanding is crucial in the first session as clients share their distress and pain. They are motivated to continue therapy when they have a feeling of hope in the therapeutic process. In this blog, I will describe two ways to instill hope during the first session.

First, clients feel hopeful when they have an awareness of their strengths, which provides confidence that they can face and overcome their difficulties. It is important to hold a “both/and” perspective in talking about strengths, reflecting that you understand the seriousness of the clients’ concerns and problems while also pointing out the capabilities reflected in their life stories. Most often, clients enter therapy feeling discouraged and self-critical. Feelings of shame and fear are common, whether their symptoms are new, have occurred at other times, or have been ongoing. There are a number of ways to identify and highlight the client’s strengths, depending on the initial presentation and the flow of the session. When the client leads with a description of what isn’t working and how their life has been impacted negatively, you can ask how they have coped with this difficult situation and support whatever positive coping strategies they report using. An example is “It’s impressive that you’ve been able to connect with a friend at least once a week, even though your depression has interfered with your appetite and sleep and your mood has been very low.” You can also ask about different areas of the client’s life and contrast areas of success with areas that are more problematic by saying, for example, “It sounds like your anxiety has made it hard to speak up in meetings at work, but you were able to advocate for your daughter to get the help she needed at school.” It also helps to reflect the client’s statements of strength in addition to reflecting and empathizing with their problems.

Second, clients need to leave a first session with a sense of hope in and direction for the therapy. I use the last 5-10 minutes of the first session for this purpose, including asking the client how it has been to talk about her concerns, summarizing how I would anticipate working together on her presenting issues, and expressing confidence that therapy can be helpful. I emphasize the collaborative nature of therapy by using terms like “working together” or “what we might look at,” and I provide a realistic assessment of the uncertainty and difficulty of changing longstanding patterns along with my belief that things can improve. A short summary statement is “If you want to continue working together, I would recommend looking at the emotions that have led to your outbursts of anger and how you can develop different ways to express those emotions before they become really intense. I know you’ve avoided the fear and sadness we talked about very briefly today, but I believe those emotions are related to the anger outbursts. You said your goal is to reduce your anger, and if you’re willing to look at those other emotions as you’re ready, I think you’ll be able to do that.”

If you keep these two strategies in mind in your first session with clients, I believe you’ll help them feel hopeful about continuing to work with you in therapy. If you’re interested in reading more about this and related issues, click here to order from Amazon or here to order from Routledge.

Cross-Cultural Mental Health Treatment

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I have just been assigned to see a client who is from a culture that is completely unfamiliar to me.  She immigrated to the U.S. three years ago and speaks English, but I’m concerned about being able to do psychotherapy with her.  How can I make sure I don’t over diagnose symptoms that may have a different cultural meaning for her than for my other clients?

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It’s good that you’re aware of the importance of your client’s culture in your diagnosis and psychotherapy.  When working with a client whose culture is unfamiliar to you, I recommend doing some research into the culture to learn some basic facts about her country of origin.  If you haven’t worked with other individuals who are recent immigrants, doing research into this area will also be valuable.  However, also remember that your client is the best person to educate you about herself.  She is presenting for behavioral health treatment because she is in distress and wants help with some issues that are troubling her.  The skills you use in the first session with any client will serve you well in this situation.  In addition, you may want to ask her how her family members or friends in her country of origin would understand or interpret her symptoms to provide some cultural context for her concerns.

One way to keep the cultural context in mind when using the DSM for diagnostic purposes is to ask about events leading up to the client’s immigration and conditions since she arrived in the U.S.  It is possible that an adjustment disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis may be appropriate.  If her symptoms don’t fit either of these diagnoses, you can use an initial “not otherwise specified” or provisional diagnosis, which will note your lack of sufficient information to make a full diagnosis.  This can be changed as you learn more about her history and current life circumstances.

Another way to use the DSM as a resource for assessment is to incorporate the cultural formulation found in Appendix I of the DSM-IV and in Section III of the DSM-5.  The outline for cultural formulation includes cultural identity, cultural conceptualization of distress, psychosocial stressors and supports, and cross-cultural features of the treatment relationship.  The DSM-5 also includes a set of interview questions that can be used in assessing the cultural context of the client’s clinical presentation.

A final issue to consider in your initial assessment and ongoing psychotherapy is the cultural context of your role as a professional in the therapeutic relationship.  If you are still in training, you may not think of yourself as an expert, and many of your U.S. born clients may treat you as a peer or make comments about your status as an intern or trainee.  Many other cultures hold a value of deference to authority, however, and this may make your client reluctant to disagree with you or to express her preferences about the treatment.  In addition, recent immigrants and other cultural groups often have experiences of discrimination and misunderstanding by officials, administrators and service providers.  It can be helpful to directly express your interest in the client’s ideas, to ask open-ended rather than closed questions, and to acknowledge the extent and limitations of your knowledge.  Even so, it may take more time to develop a therapeutic alliance with this client than with clients who are from cultural backgrounds similar to yours.

I hope you find this blog helpful in working cross-culturally.  Please email me with comments, questions or suggestions for future blog topics.

Field Placement Terminology

sunset_5What’s the difference between psychotherapy, case management, mental health and behavioral health programs?

If you are new to the field of psychology, marriage and family therapy or social work, you may have questions about some of the terms that are used to describe your practicum or field placement setting. Your program may use one of the terms above or a different term to describe the type of services provided to clients.

Psychotherapy involves a relationship between a client, which could be an individual or a family, and a therapist in a private, confidential setting for a specified time, traditionally 50 minutes once a week. In psychotherapy, the therapist and client identify goals for their work together, usually related to reduction of symptoms and improvement in areas of the client’s life, which may include homework or practice outside of the session. The therapist may coordinate with other health and social service providers, but the communication is primarily between the therapist and client. There are legal regulations restricting the provision of psychotherapy to individuals who meet certain education and experience qualifications.

Case management covers a broader range of activities in which the case manager may accompany the client to appointments, contact agencies and providers to advocate for the client, arrange and facilitate the client having access to housing or other resources, and/or serve as a mentor or coach. The length and frequency of sessions is based on the client’s needs and may vary from several hours multiple times per week to less than an hour once a month. The goals are often similar to goals of psychotherapy but the client and case manager may work on other practical goals with the case manager providing direct assistance. Case managers may be paraprofessionals, clinicians in training or licensed mental health professionals.

sunrise_vert_1A mental health or behavioral health program usually provides different types or levels of service to clients. Psychotherapy and case management are often included along with assessment and evaluation, inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment, medication management, and/or psychoeducation and support groups. Services may be coordinated within a treatment team of providers with different areas of specialty and expertise. The term behavioral health has been used increasingly during the last 20 years as programs and government departments began to combine mental health services with substance abuse services. The fact that these conditions overlap in a large proportion of individuals led to the rise of integrated services provided under the label “behavioral health.”

I hope this brief summary clarifies some of your questions. Please email me with comments, suggestions or further questions.