Despite the common assumption that increased therapist experience correlates with improved client outcomes, studies reveal inconsistent relationships between therapist experience and therapy effectiveness. Some studies have demonstrated a slight worsening of client outcomes as therapists gain more experience. Yet, there are few studies that have examined how therapists change in their client outcomes over time, especially across different outcomes (e.g., depression, life functioning, anxiety). The present study used the Behavioral Health Measure-17 to investigate therapist effectiveness over time on multiple treatment outcomes (e.g., general distress, life functioning, anxiety, alcohol/drug use) using a large naturalistic sample of 613 professional therapists and 42,690 clients over approximately 12 years of psychotherapy data. Our results show a significant decrease in client outcomes over time in three domains: general distress, life functioning, and anxiety, albeit small-sized effects. Our findings also indicate that therapist caseload and baseline severity were not associated with predicting client outcomes and that, unexpectedly, the severity of therapist caseloads decreased over time. These findings underscore the importance of a nuanced understanding of therapist effectiveness, challenging the assumption of universal improvement with experience. Furthermore, we believe that these findings may offer preliminary support for matching therapists with clients based on domain-specific strengths. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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随着时间的推移，探索治疗师在多个领域的有效性。


尽管人们普遍认为治疗师体验的增加与客户结果的改善相关，但研究表明治疗师体验与治疗效果之间的关系不一致。一些研究表明，随着治疗师获得更多经验，客户的结果会略有恶化。然而，很少有研究检查治疗师如何随着时间的推移改变他们的客户结果，尤其是不同的结果（例如，抑郁、生活机能、焦虑）。本研究使用行为健康测量 17 来调查治疗师随时间对多种治疗结果（例如，一般痛苦、生活功能、焦虑、酒精/药物使用）的有效性，使用由 613 名专业治疗师和 42,690 名客户组成的大型自然主义样本在大约 12 年的心理治疗数据中。我们的结果表明，随着时间的推移，客户在三个领域的结果显着下降：一般痛苦、生活功能和焦虑，尽管影响很小。我们的研究结果还表明，治疗师的病例量和基线严重程度与预测客户结果无关，而且出乎意料的是，治疗师病例量的严重程度随着时间的推移而下降。这些发现强调了对治疗师有效性的细致入微的理解的重要性，挑战了随着经验而普遍改进的假设。此外，我们认为这些发现可能为基于特定领域优势的治疗师与客户匹配提供初步支持。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。