As a clinical psychologist and educator, I am often asked to recommend a psychotherapist for people in need. These requests come with a sense of urgency to find the best possible therapist. Many people are at a loss over what to look for.

Here I offer an answer, not just to the question of what makes for a great therapist, but what else helps make therapy work. Decades of research on what improves psychotherapy outcomes yields surprising answers.

Curiously, some things that could matter a lot don’t. These include the therapist’s experience, gender, profession or graduate degree, and even the school of therapy practised. In fact, differences among therapists account for only five per cent of the variability in treatment outcomes.

Of course, five per cent is not nothing and I’ll come back to what makes up these therapist differences. However, it is clear we need to look elsewhere to discover what else makes therapy work.

To read more click on this link: (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-10-secret-successful-psychotherapy.html)