Trial reportJournal of counseling psychology2015
Therapist-reported alliance: Is it really a predictor of outcome?
Trial report in Journal of counseling psychology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Does the Digital Therapeutic Alliance Exist? Integrative Review.JMIR mental health · 2025Pooled it
- When therapist estimations of the process of treatment can predict patients rating on outcome: The case of the working alliance.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · 2018Trial
- The relationship between alliance and outcome: Analysis of a two-person perspective on alliance and session outcome.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · 2016Trial
- Pattern formation, ruptures, and repairs in treatments of personality disorders: an idiographic case series study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Using Collaborative Documentation to Support Person-Centered Care in Substance Use Settings.The journal of behavioral health services & research · 2024Article
- The status of psychodynamic psychotherapy as an empirically supported treatment for common mental disorders - an umbrella review based on updated criteria.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2023Article
- Therapists' first impression of treatment motivation moderates the relationship between the client-rated therapeutic alliance and drinking outcomes during treatment.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2023Article
- Prospective associations between working alliance, basic psychological need satisfaction, and coaching outcome indicators: a two-wave survey study among 181 Dutch coaching clients.BMC psychology · 2022Article
- Client-therapist dyads and therapy outcome: Does sex matching matters? A cross-sectional study.BMC psychology · 2022Article
- Therapists' and Clients' Perceptions of Bonding as Predictors of Outcome in Multisystemic TherapyFamily process · 2018Article
- Identifying the most suitable treatment for depression based on patients' attachment: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of supportive-expressive vs. supportive treatments.BMC psychiatry · 2018Article
- What matters more? Common or specific factors in cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD: Therapeutic alliance and expectations as predictors of treatment outcome.Behaviour research and therapy · 2018Article
- Not Just Nonspecific Factors: The Roles of Alliance and Expectancy in Treatment, and Their Neurobiological Underpinnings.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2018Review
- Balancing clinical risk with countertransference management protects Alliance.Research in psychotherapy (Milano) · 2017Article
- New analytic strategies help answer the controversial question of whether alliance is therapeutic in itself.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2016Article
- Relationship Between Personality Style and Diagnostic Characteristics With Therapeutic Process Variables of Adults With Eating Disorders.Clinical psychology & psychotherapyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Most of the literature on the alliance-outcome association is based exclusively on differences between patient reports on alliance. Much less is known about the unique contribution of the therapist's report to this association across treatment, that is, the association between therapist-reported alliance and outcome over the course of treatment, after controlling for the patient's contribution. The present study is the first to examine the unique contribution of the therapist-reported alliance to outcome, accounting for reverse causation (symptomatic levels predicting alliance), at several time points in the course of treatment. Of 156 patients randomized to dynamic supportive-expressive psychotherapy, antidepressant medication with clinical management, and placebo with clinical management, 149 were included in the present study. Alliance was assessed from the perspective of both the patient and the therapist. Outcome measures included the patients' self-reported and diagnostician-rated depressive symptoms. Overall, the findings demonstrate that the therapists' contribution to the alliance-outcome association was explained mainly by prior symptomatic levels. However, when a time lag of several sessions was introduced between alliance and symptoms, a positive association emerged between alliance at 1 time point and symptomatic distress assessed several sessions later in the treatment, controlling for previous symptomatic level. The findings were similar whether or not we controlled for the patient's perspective on the alliance. Taken together, the findings attest to the importance of improving therapists' ability to detect deterioration in the alliance.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.