I read a lot of research.  When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - Endnote - which currently contains well over 22,000 abstracts.  I also regularly tweet about emerging research, so following me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (click on the relevant icon at the top of this web page) will keep you up to speed with what I'm finding interesting.  Additionally you can view this highlighted research by visiting Scoop.it (click on the "it!" icon at the top of the page).  At Scoop.it, I stream publications into five overlapping topic areas: Cognitive & General Psychotherapy, Depression, Compassion & Mindfulness, Healthy Living & Healthy Aging, and Positive Psychology.

"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."  Ursula Le Guin

I read a lot of research.  When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - Endnote - which currently contains over 22,000 abstracts.  I also regularly tweet about emerging research, so following me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (click on the relevant icon at the top of this web page) will keep you up to speed with what I'm finding interesting.  Additionally you can view this highlighted research by visiting Scoop.it (click on the "it!" icon at the top of this page).  At Scoop.it, I stream publications into five overlapping topic areas: Cognitive & General Psychotherapy, Depression, Compassion & Mindfulness, Healthy Living & Healthy Aging, and Positive Psychology.

I wrote a blog post yesterday morning setting the scene for a two day workshop I was about to go to with Professor Kathy Shear on her treatment approach for complicated grief.  Well, how did the day go?  It was very interesting, inspiring, and also a little too much "simply sitting listening" for my tastes. It's hard to know what the best design for this kind of two day seminar should be. I strongly suspect though that just sitting taking in, even such excellent information with the opportunity for regular questions, isn't the most effective way of transferring knowledge.  Hard to do it, but more active audience participation would probably serve the workshop's goals even better.  Despite this, the material being shared was great ... really fascinating and important.

I was struck by a couple of papers on grief that I read last year.  One was Kathy Shear & colleagues' "Treatment of complicated grief in elderly persons: a randomized clinical trial" and the other was Bryant et al's "Treating prolonged grief disorder: a randomized clinical trial."   I was impressed because Shear's paper showed clear benefits of one treatment over a valid active comparison treatment.  Trials showing better outcomes of treatments that have been compared with "treatment as usual" (TAU) or "waiting list control" are two a penny.  However an intervention that produces an obviously better outcome than a valid alternative intervention makes me sit up and take notice.

I wrote a post a few days ago entitled "Resource activation: using clients' own strengths in psychotherapy and counseling - background (1st post)" giving some of the research basis for suggesting this territory is very relevant for therapists who are pushing to help their clients more effectively.  In order to follow up these ideas further I bought the short 'how to do it' 70 or so page book by Fluckiger, Wusten, Zinbarg & Wampold.

A bit over two years ago I wrote a sequence of three blog posts starting with "New research suggests CBT depression treatment is more effective if we focus on strengths rather than weaknesses".  This was triggered by the fascinating paper by Cheavens & colleagues "The compensation and capitalization models: A test of two approaches to individualizing the treatment of depression" - with its abstract reporting "Despite long-standing calls for the individualization of treatments for depression, modest progress has been made in this effort.

I read a lot of research.  When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - Endnote - which currently contains over 21,800 abstracts.  I also regularly tweet about emerging research, so following me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (click on the relevant icon at the top of this web page) will keep you up to speed with what I'm finding interesting.  Additionally you can view this highlighted research by visiting Scoop.it (click on the "it!" icon at the top of this page).  At Scoop.it, I stream publications into five overlapping topic areas: Cognitive & General Psychotherapy, Depression, Compassion & Mindfulness, Healthy Living & Healthy Aging, and Positive Psychology.

I read a lot of research.  When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - Endnote - which currently contains over 21,600 abstracts.  I also regularly tweet about emerging research, so following me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (click on the relevant icon at the top of this web page) will keep you up to speed with what I'm finding interesting.  Additionally you can view this highlighted research by visiting Scoop.it (click on the "it!" icon at the top of this page).  At Scoop.it, I stream publications into five overlapping topic areas: Cognitive & General Psychotherapy, Depression, Compassion & Mindfulness, Positive Psychology and Healthy Living.

Yesterday's post and today's are combined and downloadable as a Word doc or as a PDF file.