Relationship between Therapist's Empathy and Treatment Outcomes
Keywords:
empathy, psychotherapy, outcome assessment, therapeutic interactionAbstract
Therapist Empathy is a factor deemed necessary by various paradigms of psychotherapy, suggesting its relationship with the results of it. The objective of this work is to observe the existence of such a relationship in a sample of patients and check whether there is a link between personality traits of these and their and their perception of empathy of therapists. Method: In a sample of 30 subjects the treatment outcomes were recorded after five workouts using CORE-OM test and perceived empathy in their therapist (with subscale Empathic Understanding from Barrett-Lennard Relationship Scale) as well as personality traits measured by NEO-FFI. It was checked whether the average perceived therapist empathy was different in the group of patients significantly improved with respect to those who did not. It conducted an analysis of the data in order to observe whether there was a relationship between the patient's personality and perceived therapist empathy. Results: Statistically significant differences favoring the group that improved (p = .04, confidence interval: .083 – 1.32) were found. A significant positive correlation between the personality trait Extraversion and the level of perceived empathy (p = .041, confidence interval: .02 - .65) was found. Conclusions: therapist empathy plays an important role in the treatment process and personality variables influence the perception of it.Downloads
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