Measuring outcomes in therapy
What does it mean for us to understand whether therapy is useful for the patient? Whether something needs to change in approach? How do we 'gather' such feedback, without making patients feel like they are mere data points rather than human beings? How do we make sense of it? How do we not have it turn into a regimented process of filling in forms, as we sit disconnected from one another in the same room? Especially when, instead, attunement and connection may prove far more informative and beneficial to the journey being undertaken.
An excerpt from Human Suffering as Numbers and Graphs: The Problem with Measuring Outcomes in Therapy, by Matteo Zuccala, published in Mad In America:
“Therapy itself though — its structure, purpose, frame, goals — is apt to take on a different meaning when it is bookended by measures at beginning or end. That the majority of clinical measures focus on the experience of ‘symptoms’ primes both patient and therapist to view their hour together as a space for addressing illness pathology. What measures don’t focus on symptoms usually focus on ‘function’ — how engaged and productive one is in completing tasks of daily routine, as well as school or work attendance. Therapy becomes moulded to the frame of a capitalist system that views the purpose of all self-improvement endeavours — therapy included – as to improve productivity, conformity, and contribution to the economy. Therapists then become as much a supervisor of their patients’ daily performance as their manager is of their own — therapist and patient alike, together colluded in the task of meeting expectations.”
And the full academic article by Zuccala: The case against routine outcome monitoring in Clinical Psychologist, volume 28, issue 2, 2024.