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Mental health staff often experience significant levels of stress working in the acute psychiatric inpatient setting. Team-building interventions can mitigate stress in health-care settings, via improvements in team-cohesion, staff interactions and communication skills. The “Tree of Life” (ToL) is a specific narrative therapy approach which uses the metaphor of a tree to facilitate the construction and sharing of strength-based stories. This study aims to describe the development of and evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and staff experiences of the “Team Tree”, an adapted Professional ToL (PToL) intervention.

A one-hour, Professional ToL intervention was designed for multidisciplinary acute inpatient staff teams working within a psychiatric hospital in London, UK. A mixed methods approach was used to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and staff experiences of the session.

Participants were 46 multidisciplinary staff (33 women; 13 men) working across four acute psychiatric wards. The intervention was feasible to deliver and was acceptable to participants. Results showed significant improvements in self-reported mental well-being and team-cohesiveness scores post-session.

Psychologists face myriad barriers in working with staff teams in the acute inpatient setting. The “Team Tree” intervention was both well received by staff and practical to deliver within the challenging environment of the acute ward.

This adaptation of the original PToL emerged from the author’s work with distressed inpatient teams with limited time resources. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first description of this intervention using a single tree metaphor to facilitate a reflective and creative session with health-care teams.

The transtheoretical model (TTM) has been applied to varying areas of physical health, e.g. diabetes. However, research into its applicability to psychotherapy is mixed. The TTM is applied through the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment (URICA). Investigating the utility of the URICA is needed to improve patient care and outcomes. This study aims to assess whether the URICA scores relate to patient outcomes; patient attendance; practitioner ratings of patient readiness, appropriateness, insight, motivation and potential for improvement; and to explore practitioner’s perspectives on the URICA.

Correlational methods were used to assess the relationship between the URICA and therapeutic outcome, attendance and practitioner-rated areas. Content analysis was used to analyse practitioner qualitative data.

The URICA did not correlate with either therapeutic outcome or attendance. A significant negative correlation was found between the URICA and practitioner-rated appropriateness of the referral. This means practitioners perceived individuals with lower URICA scores to be a more appropriate referral, despite the score indicating a reduced readiness to change. Qualitative categories included positive views, negative views, ambivalence and changes to measure and process. To conclude, the URICA does not explain a patient’s outcome or attendance. The URICA may not be appropriate to use in its current format in mental health services; therefore, assessing the TTM verbally may be more helpful.

This study provides research into suitability of using the URICA to assess the TTM and its applicability to attendance and outcome in psychological therapies.

Adolescents with harmful sexual behaviors (AHSB) who drop out of treatment are more likely to continue offending than are those who complete treatment; therefore, it is important to identify factors that heighten the risk of dropout, so they can be detected early. The purpose of this paper is to present the predictors of treatment dropout derived from a community sample of AHSB in New Zealand.

Pretreatment data on 100 males (aged 12–16) in community-based treatment for harmful sexual behavior were analyzed. Data on 50 adolescents who dropped out were matched by age and ethnicity to 50 adolescents who completed treatment. Pretreatment variables were identified using the Estimate of Risk of Adolescent Sexual Offence Recidivism. The degree to which these variables influenced treatment dropout was tested using logistic regression.

Compared to those who completed treatment, adolescents who dropped out were more likely to have a prior history of personal victimization, to deny or minimize their behavior, to have been mandated to attend treatment and to have engaged in noncontact offences.

Screening for a prior history of personal victimization, denial or minimization, mandated treatment and noncontact offences may facilitate the prediction of dropout risk more confidently. Addressing these pretreatment risk variables has the potential to improve treatment completion rates.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to highlight treatment dropout predictors in a New Zealand community sample.

In this chapter, the author critically examines the deeply entrenched practices and theories within counselor education, revealing their roots in historically dominant, Eurocentric, and often racially oppressive assumptions. This study brings to light the pervasive impact of these traditional approaches, illuminating their role in perpetuating racial oppression and disparities in mental health care. The author presents a compelling argument for adopting Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an effective pedagogical and clinical practice framework in the counseling profession, a step toward its much-needed liberation. CRT's tenets are examined as a robust alternative, promoting socially just outcomes in counseling and psychotherapy. The article highlights CRT's capacity to address the well-established relationship between racism, white supremacy, and minority mental health. It proposes a groundbreaking model for praxis, predicated on CRT, which holds potential not only to challenge and disrupt oppressive structures but also to pave the way for the liberation of both the oppressed and the oppressor. This seminal work prompts a re-envisioning of counselor education, asserting a call for a transformative shift toward a liberation-based, social justice pedagogy.

This paper aims to examine how the fields of social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation have theorised and applied the concepts of narrative and storytelling.

A literature review and subsequent thematic analysis were used. A keyword search of three databases identified 93 relevant articles that were subsequently reviewed for this paper.

Four main roles for storytelling and narrative were found in the literature: to gain support for social innovation, to inspire social change, to build a social-entrepreneurial identity and to debate the meaning and direction of social innovation itself.

Following the literature review, capacities and applications of storytelling and narrative in other, related fields are discussed to highlight practical use cases of storytelling that might currently be underdeveloped in the social enterprise and innovation sectors.

The paper argues that the social innovation and enterprise literature predominantly views storytelling as a form of mass communication, while often overlooking its ability to foster communal debate and organise intrapersonal dialogue as possible aspects of strategic thinking and innovation management in social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation.