Building Self-Efficacy in Clients
A recent article came out describing how it can be beneficial to remind clients of their strengths. This is sometimes called “resource activation”.
Christoph Fluckiger and Martin Holtforth asked psychology trainees to discuss their clients’ strengths for five minutes before the first five therapy session. They then compared these therapy cases to therapy cases that were done without this intervention (treatment as usual before this had taken place).
Compared with the previous therapist-client pairs, the psychology trainees primed to think about their clients’ strengths subsequently had a better relationship with their clients (as judged by videotapes of their sessions) and their clients showed greater improvement by their twentieth session.
Here is a link to the original article:
Fluckiger, C., Grosse Holtforth, M. (2008). Focusing the therapist’s attention on the patient’s strengths: a preliminary study to foster a mechanism of change in outpatient psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64(7), 876-890. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20493