You never know what you are going to get: Large-scale assessment of therapists' supportive counseling skill use

Supportive counseling skills like empathy and active listening are critical ingredients of all psychotherapies, but most research relies on client or therapist reports of the treatment process. This study utilized machine-learning models trained to evaluate counseling skills to evaluate supportive skill use in 3,917 session recordings. We analyzed overall skill use and variation in practice patterns using a series of mixed effects models. On average, therapists scored moderately high on observer-rated empathy (i.e., 3.8 out of 5), 3.3% of the therapists' utterances in a session were open questions, and 12.9% of their utterances were reflections. However, there were substantial differences in skill use across therapists as well as across clients within-therapist caseloads. These findings highlight the substantial variability in the process of counseling that clients may experience when they access psychotherapy. We discuss findings in the context of both the need for therapists to be responsive and flexible with their clients, but also potential costs related to the lack of a more uniform experience of care. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).