Importance of Hope to Psychotherapy

Hope is key to coping with life’s challenges - an essential contributor to client change in psychotherapy. Lynch (1965) defined hope as, “the fundamental knowledge and feeling that there is a way out of difficulty, that things can work out, that we as human persons can somehow handle and manage internal and external reality” (pg. 32). The importance of hope to psychotherapeutic processes is explicitly claimed across a broad spectrum of theories including cognitive-behavioural, solution-focused, narrative, systemic, and emotion-focused approaches. Common factors theories reflect this reality estimating that hope may account for as much as 15% of therapeutic outcome, exerting an influence of approximately the same magnitude as that of theoretical orientation.

Hope attracts diverse disciplinary interest from nursing, psychology, education, political science, even business. While there are many well-validated hope scales, the most utilized scales within psychology are those developed by Charles Snyder (1995) where hope is understood as a positive psychological state derived from clear, conscious goals accompanied by pathways thinking (i.e., plans of action for goals attainment) and agency thinking (i.e., belief in one’s capacity to achieve one’s goals). Critique of Snyder’s hope scales balance respect for Snyder’s pioneering cognitive behavioural approach alongside research evidence that the important aspects of hope emotional, relational, spiritual, and contextual aspects of hope go virtually unaddressed.

Using the MHCPS Clinically

Clients often define success in therapy as the achievement of a single hoped-for outcome, e.g., the hope to repair a difficult relationship or the hope to gain access to a particular academic program. Use of the MHCPS with clients can tangibly and explicitly demonstrate to client and therapist alike (a) the presence of hope in the midst of client struggle, (b) a diverse range of possible ‘locations’ of hope’ available to the client, (c) where hope is most readily present and accessible in the client’s therapy and life, and (d) where the client and therapist might become curious about further building client hope. As such, the MHCPS has the potential to be a therapeutic tool in and of itself helping clients see hope in aspects of life that may have been unattended. Client responses to the MHCPS may also bolster therapist hope, deeply needed at times as therapists sit with clients in the face of dark struggles. Interestingly, during Phase 4 of scale development, several data collection sites (psychotherapy clinics) reported that clients enjoyed completing the MHCPS, with its explicit focus on hope. Indeed, some clients asked for more scales like the MHCPS that they - or even their friends – could complete, suggesting that taking the MHCPS itself can have a clinically favorable and meaningful impact on clients.