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Psychotherapy Research Group

​The Psychotherapy Research Group, Department of Psychiatry, was formally established in 1988. The objective of the groups is to conduct state-of-the-art psychotherapy research in order to advance knowledge in such clinical areas as patient selection and assignment to treatment, patient preparation for psychotherapy, retention of patients in treatment, patient work in therapy, therapist technique, and therapy outcome. The research has a focus on both individual and group forms of time-limited, dynamically-oriented psychotherapy for different types of psychiatric outpatients. The guiding model for research investigations involves assessments of patient characteristics, therapy technique, relationship quality, and therapy process, and how these variables singly and jointly predict dimensions of therapy outcome. The research is applied in nature as represented by a number of recent and ongoing clinical trial investigations conducted within the outpatient services of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta Hospitals Site. The multidisciplinary research team and associated clinical staff draw upon the fields of psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, occupational therapy, and statistics. Recent studies have investigated:
  1. The effectiveness of contrasting forms (interpretive, supportive) of time-limited, short-term individual psychotherapy.
  2. The effectiveness of contrasting forms of time-limited, short-term group psychotherapy for patients with complicated grief.
  3. The effectiveness of partial hospitalization treatment programs for patients with longstanding affective and personality disorders.
  4. The development of new measures of patient personality characteristics such as quality of object relations and psychological mindedness, and assessment of the strength of these variables as predictors of psychotherapy process and outcome.
  5. The development of new measures of psychotherapy process (patient work, insight) and examination of the action of change mechanisms over the course of psychotherapy.
  6. The development of new measures of therapist technique (type of interventions, adherence to therapy manuals) and assessment of the impact of technique on the therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome.
  7. Fine-grained analysis of patient-therapist process episodes in short-term, time-limited individual psychotherapy.

 Clinician-Researchers

Dr. William E. Piper (Former Director)
Dr. Hassan F. A. Azim
Dr. Paul I. Steinberg

Psychology Technicians

Maarit Cristall
Ward Nicholson

Research Assistants

Mandy Sheptycki

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Daniel Rochman