Current Research
Research Program
Broadly speaking, our work focuses on identifying and developing ways to capitalize on patient, therapist, and dyadic characteristics and processes that can enhance the effectiveness of mental health care. More specifically, we study personalized pathways to therapeutic change through answering the broad questions of how, for whom and in what contexts, and when delivered by whom does psychotherapy work? Across these interrelated foci, we draw on diverse research designs and methods, including longitudinal process-outcome research, experimental comparative effectiveness trials, meta-analyses, community-based research (with diverse MHC stakeholders), and qualitative studies. We conduct this work in the context of various treatments (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, and prolonged exposure), for a broad range of conditions (e.g., depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder). Across these treatment-patient contexts, we're very interested in bridging the science-practice gap by increasing the effectiveness and precision of therapeutic interventions, including when delivered in routine practice settings that can reach historically underserved and marginalized populations.
Current Studies
Intervention personalization study
The OPT lab is collaborating with a colleague from Argentina (Dr. Gómez Penedo) on a project (funded by two grants from Division 29 of the APA) that is developing a machine-learning-based system for the measurement-based personalization of naturalistically administered psychotherapy interventions (i.e., cognitive, behavioral, interpersonal, and person-centered) to the unique needs of low-income Argentine patients with depressive and/or anxiety disorders. More specifically, to enhance feasibility and implementation potential, this system will provide therapists with recommendations and guidance for how to tailor their use of the core interventions they already know and use in a way that optimizes the outcomes for each individual patient.
Patient-therapist match studies
Other ongoing studies address the question of what treatments and processes are most effective in the hands of which therapists. For example, we recently found that prospectively matching patients to therapists based on therapists’ empirically derived strengths in naturalistically treating different mental health problems (e.g., depression, substance misuse) outperformed case assignment as usual (Constantino, Boswell, Coyne et al., 2021). Building on these results, we are conducting several projects to build another patient-therapist match system that can help enhance equity in psychotherapy. Specifically, this system aims to match patients to providers who not only demonstrate effectiveness in treating their primary mental health problem(s), but who also have a track record of effectively treating patients with similar social identities (e.g., racial/ethnic identities, gender, sexual orientation, etc).
Uncovering trainable determinants of therapist performance study
We are also conducting a project (funded by a Charles Gelso Psychotherapy Research Grant from Division 29 of the APA) that aims to uncover trainable therapist-level pathways for improving patient outcomes. This in-progress multisite study tests whether therapists’ observer-coded facilitative interpersonal skill (FIS) vis-à-vis challenging clinical scenarios enables them to better cultivate and capitalize on more positive alliances and patient treatment-related beliefs, which in turn relate to better caseload-level outcomes. If the results are promising, we hope to conduct a randomized controlled training study.
