This is the third in a series of guest posts from bacpac user, psychotherapist, coach and consultant, Barry McInnes, exploring the benefits of recording and analysing measures as part of therapy. Click here to read the first part and second part in the series.

In my last blog, I introduced 5 compelling reasons to use outcome measures in therapy. Over the next few blogs, I’ll be unpacking each one.

Without further ado, reason number 1…

You may learn something about your client’s experience that you really, really need to know

Most of us see our clients for no more than one hour a week. Our clients experience the remaining 167 hours without us. However comprehensive our assessment of their needs may be, there will be always areas of their experience that are unknown to us, particularly in the early stages of therapy.

Global measures of distress such as the CORE-OM and GHQ-28 enable us to access areas of our clients’ experience that we may not otherwise discover. Some of these aspects may affect their capacity to engage with therapy, especially in the critical early stages.

Take, for example, the client who is chronically sleep deprived, or whose levels of despair and hopelessness may cause them to abandon therapy prematurely. For this client, these symptoms may be such a ‘normal’ part of their existence that they fail to mention them during therapy. As such, these factors escape our attention, but still have the capacity to affect the course of our work with the client.

Collecting outcome measures routinely during treatment could help to bring to the surface something that makes the difference between early termination and a successful outcome.

I’d welcome your thoughts and your feedback – drop me a line by emailing barrymcinnes@virginmedia.com. You can also read more about what works in therapy from a research perspective on my website.

If you are a practising therapist in private practice and would like to contribute to the bacpac blog yourself, please get in touch.