Development of a training programme in individual case formulation skills and a scale for assessing its effectiveness

Area of Science:

• Clinical Psychology
• Psychotherapy Research

Background:

• Clinical formulation skills are not well understood.
• The individual case formulation (ICF) approach uses theory-free descriptions and basic conventions for functional analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the teachability of the ICF approach.
• To assess the reliability of rating ICF diagrams.

Main Methods:

• Forty participants underwent a training course in formulation.
• A rating scale for formulation diagrams was developed and refined.
• Inter-rater reliability was established for the rating scale.

Main Results:

• The ICF approach was successfully taught to participants.
• The developed rating scale demonstrated basic inter-rater reliability.
• The quality of formulation diagrams could be reliably rated.

Conclusions:

• The ICF approach is a teachable method for clinical formulation.
• Further development of the ICF approach is warranted based on these findings.