Keri Hulme ‘The Bone People’

I practice as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and have seventeen years experience working with people going through difficulties in their lives. I have dealt with vulnerable families and those struggling with addiction. Most recently I have focused on the area of sexual violence and also have experience in assisting people struggling with illness, bereavement and loss.

Julie Brown, Accredited Mem IFPP, MSc Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, HDipEd, BSc.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an in-depth but gentle and reflective therapy. It explores every part of your experience and brings meaning and insight.

The focus during sessions is on what is happening in the present moment. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy seeks to look beyond the surface of the presenting difficulty. In the safe and reliable therapy setting we would explore together thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams and fantasies as they arise organically during each session.

This helps to deepen awareness and emotional insight into areas of experience which are beyond our conscious awareness but yet exert a powerful influence on our experience and behaviour.

Therapy typically involves meeting to speak with me in fifty-minute sessions either once or twice per week.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is helpful in addressing anxiety, anger, abuse, trauma, bullying, depression, sexuality issues, stress, bereavement, loss and physical problems that may have a psychological origin.

An impressive and expanding body of international research has measured the advantages of psychoanalytic psychotherapy over medication as well as other modes of therapy in treating a broad range of mental health issues. Perhaps most significantly, measured improvements not only sustained but increased in long term follow up studies suggesting that the patients’ capacities continued to grow and develop even years after treatment ended.

Relevant research is cited here:

Training

Training a psychoanalytic psychotherapist typically takes many years and includes both academic and clinical components. An academic M.Sc. is read at Trinity College Dublin. The therapist must undergo their own analysis twice weekly over a number of years. The trainee therapist must see patients over a minimum two-year period under the supervision of a senior psychoanalytic psychotherapist to qualify. Two years post qualification work under supervision is required for professional membership and registration with the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been proven in a variety of international research to be more effective at improving state of mind issues and alleviating distress than medication or other therapies and counselling.

It aims to both address current symptoms and to develop in a patient the capacity to better cope with life’s challenges. This ensures that improvements brought about in treatment are maintained long after treatment ends.

In studies appraising the benefits of the treatment, what researches call an 'effect size' is essentially the tool used to measure the effect of treatments or improvement in symptoms. It is an agreed criteria used to ensure that research around the world is conducted within the same parameters, meaning findings are universally comparable.

I have put together a list, by no means exhaustive, of studies that clearly underline the advantages of psychoanalytic psychotherapy over other treatments in addressing a range of clinical issues.

In the examples below, an effect size is a measure of the strength of a phenomenon. For the purposes of outlining/explaining the research cited below please consider 0.8 as excellent, 0.5 as average, and 0.2 as poor. When the examples refer to meta-analysis, these are effectively summary of findings of a number of studies in a common subject area.

Common mental health disorders:

A meta-analysis of 1,431 psychoanalytic psychotherapy patients revealed significant improvements in symptoms (0.97); with those benefits increasing by a further 50 per cent (1.51) when followed up long term. Improvements in patients brought about by psychoanalytic psychotherapy continued long after treatment ended. Abbass, A. A., Hancock, J. T., Henderson, J., & Kisely, S. (2006). Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapies for common mental disorders. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 4, Article No. CD004687.

Somatic Disorders:

One 2009 meta-analysis examined the short term use of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for dealing with somatic symptoms in 1,870 patients. It found the treatment to be very effective in improving general psychological symptoms as well as somatic symptoms - effect sizes of 0.69 for improvement in general psychiatric symptoms and 0.59 for improvement in somatic symptoms. The study also found short team treatment use reduced the need for further medical interventions. Abbass, A., Kisely, S., & Kroenke, K. (2009). Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy for somatic disorders: Systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 78, 265–274. Long term psychoanalytic therapy v Short term therapy to treat complex disorders. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy was the most effective form of treatment, (1.03) with improvement continuing (1.25) long after end of treatment. Leichsenring, F., & Rabung, S. (2008). Effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of the American Medical Association, 300, 1551–1565.

Range of illness from moderate and mixed to severe pathology:

Significant and lasting improvements with psychoanalytic psychotherapy; 0.78 increasing to 0.94 long term follow up moderate pathology, and 0.94 increasing to 1.02 at long term follow up. de Maat, S., de Jonghe, F., Schoevers, R.,& Dekker, J. (2009). The effectiveness of long-term psychoanalytic therapy: A systematic review of empirical studies. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 17, 1–23.

Interested readers might find the article below by Shedler illuminating. In summary, the evidence in support of psychoanalytic psychotherapy as an effective and medically proven means of treatment is overwhelming and beyond doubt.

Shedler, J., (2010). The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65, 98-109.

Thank you to Paul Moore M.Sc. Carlow Kilkenny Psychotherapy for providing a succinct summary of relevant research which I have drawn from in collating the above section.