Therapist characteristics in the treatment of sexual offenders: Tentative data on their relationship with indices of behaviour change

Therapist features in sexual offender treatment: their reliable identification and influence on behaviour change

“…In Study 1 we were also unable to identify humour on more than 25% of the appropriate occasions. Confrontation appears to have disappeared as a result of changes introduced in the therapist training programme in 1999 as a result of our earlier finding (Marshall et al, 2002b) that confrontation by the therapists reduced treatment effectiveness. It is not clear why the other two features occurred so rarely.…”

“…In the first tentative report in this series we (Marshall et al, 2002b) demonstrated that the presence of some therapist features were related to treatmentinduced changes in the clients. The goal of the present larger study is to expand these observations of a relationship between features of therapist behaviours and treatment changes among sexual offenders.…”

“…For each of the 25 tapes (five tapes from each of five prisons) a trained and experienced judge rated the therapists' behaviours for the presence of 17 features that had been identified in our first two studies (Study 1 of this report and in Marshall et al, 2002b). This judge had been involved in those two previous studies.…”

“…Thus any relationships we do identify might be expected to be magnified in a less structured programme. Fortunately, our first tentative examination of the influence of therapist features in the HM Prisons (Marshall et al, 2002b), although limited in scope, did identify relationships between therapists' behaviours and indices of change. Furthermore, that initial study occurred prior to a change in the therapist training programme, the latter version of which placed far greater stress on the role and skills of the therapist.…”

Keep Safe: the development of a manualised group CBT intervention for adolescents with ID who display harmful sexual behaviours

“…Demonstrating empathy and encouragement, being firm but flexible, and creating a cohesive and positive therapeutic climate is more likely to facilitate positive treatment gains and outcomes (see, e.g. Sandhu & Rose 2012, Marshall et al 2003, Marshall 2005. Therefore, the Keep Safe manual has a section on group skills, and the sessional activities are designed to provide practice of skil , and their parent/carers engagement and success in treatment.…”