Qualitative Methods in Evaluation of Strategic Psychotherapy

Introduction: Randomized clinical trials are often considered as the gold standard in psychotherapy evaluation. They aren’t nevertheless the only methods for this kind of studies (Seligman, 1995; Goldfried, 2013). Evaluating outcomes in a psychotherapy should verify not only symptoms recovery (Nardone & Watzlavick, 1990; Fensterheim & Raw, 1996) but also change processes, going from a symptom oriented to a resource oriented logic. This research was part of a wider project arisen from the cooperation between Department of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, Italy, and Strategic Therapy Center of Arezzo, Italy (Chiodini, Maspes, Meringolo, in press). Aims were to assess efficacy of brief strategic therapy by means of qualitative analysis, and to highlight changes realized during the therapy. Participants were 5 patients, with panic attacks, during 20 sessions. Findings: six macro areas have been identified and then represented by means of code trees, so to summarize emerging codes from sessions and show dimensions on which brief strategic psychotherapy operates.The text coming from the sessions has been analyzed, in order to identify both clear and hidden meanings (as in Zhang & Wildemuth, 2009). Discussion and conclusions: we may observe that quantitative methods may not be the only methodological procedure for assessing psychotherapy efficacy (Seligman, 1995; Goldfried, 2013). By means of qualitative evaluation we have attempted to focus on the development of patients’ resources (and empowerment) and their capability to manage problematic situations, according to the aims of brief strategic therapy (Nardone & Watzlavick, 1990). Brief strategic therapy appears to be effective in several dimensions of patients’ life. Process Evaluation: awareness about individuals resources, so to be able to manage anxiety, emerges as one of the main achieved goals.