This project seeks to address the current mental health crisis by enhancing the clinical training and practice of mental health professionals. We have several key innovations built within and across our collaborative team science approach with eight diverse clinical training site projects. We will develop and test evidence-based training tools that integrate relational virtues and flourishing into psychotherapy. Emerging research shows therapists want and need training on best practices for implementing these concepts into treatment with sensitivity to suffering and sociocultural contexts.
In our projects, we will utilize a reciprocal relationship between developing training approaches and examining the impact via clinical research. This will help generate new treatment and training insights on how best to integrate virtue and flourishing within mainstream psychotherapy approaches. Additionally, our focus on therapist formation also addresses rising levels of therapist burnout and makes an innovative contribution to the clinical training of future generations of therapists.
We also plan to develop an early career cohort of clinical scholars and conduct a request for proposals for research in this area to help build a network for sustaining this work on virtue and flourishing in psychotherapy into the future. We will be able to train hundreds of therapists in this project and the training materials/guidelines have the potential to impact tens of thousands of trainees and trainers. The training and clinical protocols will be disseminated broadly through publications, presentations, training seminars, and websites.
Our study with experts in the field will also inform training guidelines within major training organizations and this work will be a centerpiece of our co-edited book, special section in a major journal, and our closing conference. Ultimately, our project has the potential for wide-spread impact for transforming the training and practice of psychotherapy.
