Browsing by Author "Santos, Anita"
Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- Helping Clients Victimized by Intimate Partners Through Stages of Change: An Emotion-Focused ApproachPublication . Leal, João; Cunha, Carla; Santos, Anita; Salgado, JoãoIntimate partner violence results in extensive negative mental health outcomes including depression, posttraumatic stress, and anxiety. Moreover, victimized partners who experience cumulative episodes of abuse over time can also present severe afect dysregulation and interpersonal difculties. Preliminary evidence for existing psychological treatments shows that these are globally efective on a symptomatic level and in reducing revictimization. Nonetheless, systematic reviews show high attrition rates and suggest that future interventions need to address a wider range of emotional difculties and contextual challenges according to readiness for change. In this article, our goal is to contribute to the development of more responsive interventions that are tailored to individual experiences of violence with a focus on personal values, self-determination, and autonomy, as well as promoting adaptive coping and safety. More specifcally, we describe how the intervention principles and experiential tasks of a neohumanistic model, emotion-focused therapy, can be integrated into a mediating readiness for change framework to help victimized clients receiving psychological treatment. We address four main problematic contentafective states that may hinder the therapeutic progress (interrupting fear of change, decisional pain, overwhelming safety concerns, and long-term interpersonal injuries), their association with stages of change, and how they can be resolved insession using emotion-focused principles and interventions. The implications for future research are also discussed .
- Helping Clients Victimized by Intimate Partners Through Stages of Change: An Emotion-Focused ApproachPublication . Leal, João; Cunha, Carla; Santos, Anita; Salgado, JoãoIntimate partner violence results in extensive negative mental health outcomes including depression, posttraumatic stress, and anxiety. Moreover, victimized partners who experience cumulative episodes of abuse over time can also present severe affect dysregulation and interpersonal difficulties. Preliminary evidence for existing psychological treatments shows that these are globally effective on a symptomatic level and in reducing revictimization. Nonetheless, systematic reviews show high attrition rates and suggest that future interventions need to address a wider range of emotional difficulties and contextual challenges according to readiness for change. In this article, our goal is to contribute to the development of more responsive interventions that are tailored to individual experiences of violence with a focus on personal values, self-determination, and autonomy, as well as promoting adaptive coping and safety. More specifically, we describe how the intervention principles and experiential tasks of a neohumanistic model, emotion-focused therapy, can be integrated into a mediating readiness for change framework to help victimized clients receiving psychological treatment. We address four main problematic contentaffective states that may hinder the therapeutic progress (interrupting fear of change, decisional pain, overwhelming safety concerns, and long-term interpersonal injuries), their association with stages of change, and how they can be resolved insession using emotion-focused principles and interventions. The implications for future research are also discussed.
- Innovative moments and change in narrative therapyPublication . Matos, Marlene; Santos, Anita; Gonçalves, Miguel; Martins, CarlaNarrative therapy suggests that change happens by paying close attention in therapy to "unique outcomes," which are narrative details outside the main story (White & Epston, 1990). In this exploratory study, unique outcomes were analyzed in five good-outcome and five poor-outcome psychotherapy cases using the Innovative Moments Coding System (Gonçalves, Matos, & Santos, 2008). Across 127 sessions, innovative moments were coded in terms of salience and type. In accordance with the theory, results suggest that innovative moments are important to therapeutic change. Poor- and good-outcome groups have a global difference in the salience of the innovative moments. In addition, results suggest that two particular types of innovative moments are needed in narrative therapy for therapeutic change to take place: re-conceptualization and new experiences. Implications for future research using this model of analysis are discussed.
- Innovative moments and change pathways: A good outcome case of narrative therapyPublication . Santos, Anita; Gonçalves, Miguel; Matos, Marlene; Salvatore, SergioOur aim was to explore the development of innovative moments (i-moments) in therapeutic conversation and to study how they match our heuristic model that accounts for the development of change, drawn from previous empirical research.
- Innovative moments and poor outcome in narrative therapyPublication . Santos, Anita; Gonçalves, Miguel M.; Matos, MarleneAims: To analyze a poor outcome case of narrative therapy with a woman victim of intimate violence. Method: The Innovative Moments Coding System: version 1 was applied to all sessions to track the innovative moments (i-moments) in the therapeutic conversation. I–moments are the narrative details that occur in psychotherapeutic conversations that are outside the influence of the problematic narrative. This research aims to describe the processes involved in meanings’ stability along psychotherapy through a dialogical approach to meaning making. Results: Contrarily to what usually occurs in good outcome cases, re-conceptualization i-moments are absent. Moreover, two specific types of i-moments emerged with higher duration: reflection and protest. Qualitative analysis showed that the potential meanings of these i-moments were surpassed by a return to the problematic narrative. Conclusion: The therapeutic stability seems to be maintained by a systematic return to the problematic narrative after the emergence of novelties, a process that was referred from a dialogical perspective as a mutual in-feeding of voices (Valsiner, 2002), one that emerges in the i-moment and another one that supports the problematic narrative. The problematic narrative is maintained by an oscillation between these two types of voices along therapy.
- Internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety among university students: A systematic review and meta-analysisPublication . Oliveira, Cláudia; Pacheco, Mara; Borges, Janete; Meira, Liliana; Santos, AnitaUniversity years are marked by multiple stressors. Consequently, university students often report anxiety symptoms or disorders, but most remain untreated. Internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) has been proposed as an alternative to address known help-seeking barriers, which were aggravated during the COVID-19 pandemic. This meta-analysis aims to evaluate the efficacy of ICBT for university students with anxiety. A systematic search on three databases, EBSCOhost, PubMed, and Web of Science, and a manual search were performed. Fifteen studies were identified, including a total of 1619 participants. Seven studies evaluated ICBT treatment for both anxiety and depression, three for social anxiety, two for generalized anxiety, while the remaining (k = 3) only targeted anxiety, test anxiety, and comorbidity between anxiety and insomnia. Analyses were performed based on a random-effects model using the metafor package in R. The results indicated that ICBT had a significant and positive effect on university students with anxiety compared to controls at post-test (g = 0.48; 95 % CI: 0.63, 0.27; p < .001, I2 = 67.30 %). Nevertheless, more research is required to determine the intervention components that are more relevant for therapeutic change, how much guidance is required to produce better outcomes, and how patient engagement can be improved.
- Intervenção em grupo com vítimas de violência doméstica: Uma revisão da sua eficáciaPublication . Matos, Marlene; Machado, Andreia; Santos, Anita; Machado, CarlaApós o reconhecimento social, a violência doméstica tem adquirido progressivamente uma expressão significativa nas estatísticas criminais no nosso país. Paralelamente, atendendo aos elevados custos que habitualmente estão associados a esta experiência (e.g., saúde física e psicológica), a actuação de profissionais especializados nesta área foi assumindo cada vez mais relevância, constituindo-se a mulher vítima como um dos principais alvos da intervenção. Nesse contexto, assistiu-se nos últimos anos ao desenvolvimento de diferentes modalidades psicoterapêuticas dirigidas a essa população, entre as quais a intervenção em grupo. O objectivo deste trabalho consiste, pois, em sistematizar o conhecimento actual sobre a eficácia da intervenção em grupo com mulheres vítimas desse tipo de violência, reflectindo criticamente sobre as suas potencialidades. Após uma revisão da literatura internacional (e.g., Cox & Stolberg, 1991; McBride, 2001; Rinfret-Raynor & Cantin, 1997; Tutty, Bidgood, & Rothery, 1993), constata-se que essa é uma das mais comuns modalidades de intervenção facultadas às vítimas, revelando-se útil e com grande impacto junto dessas mulheres (e.g., Trimpey, 1989, citado por McBride, 2001; Tutty et al., 1993). Finalmente, a partir dos estudos disponíveis, apontamos os principais desafios no desenvolvimento de estudos empíricos neste contexto, bem como algumas implicações práticas para a implementação de intervenções em grupo com esta população.
- Narrative change in Gloria Films: Comparing various processes of therapeutic innovationPublication . Barbosa, Eunice; Cunha, Carla; Santos, Anita; Gonçalves, Miguel M.; Salgado, JoãoThe present study focuses on the analysis of novelty emergence in classic Gloria Films with Rogers, Perls, and Ellis to understand how the same client formulated her own problem and if and how change occurred in those three sessions.
- Narrative Therapy and the Nature Of “Innovative Moments” in the Construction of ChangePublication . Gonçalves, Miguel M.; Matos, Marlene; Santos, AnitaAccording to the narrative metaphor of psychotherapy, clients transform themselves by changing their life stories. According to the narrative therapy of White and Epston (1990), the construction of change occurs from the expansion of unique outcomes, or innovative moments as we prefer to call them, that is, the development of episodes outside the problem-saturated narrative. Unique outcomes operate as exceptions to the rule (i.e., to the problem-saturated story) that can be changed to a new rule (i.e., a new narrative). We suggest that some forms of unique outcomes can operate as shadow-voices (Gustafson, 1992) of the problem-saturated story, allowing a temporary release from the problem, but facilitating a return to it. In our view, there is a particular type of unique outcome —re-conceptualization— that facilitates sustained change. This kind of innovation facilitates the emergence of a meta-level perspective about the change process itself, and in turn, enables the active positioning of the person as an author of the new narrative.
- The perspective of young people in residential care regarding their autonomization processPublication . Lopes, Maria Martins; Grangeia, Helena; Santos, AnitaAlthough Portugal presents a high percentage of young people in residential care, research on the subject is scarce, and rarely takes into account the narratives of the young people themselves. The present study was conducted with the aim of understanding how young people in residential care face the process of autonomization. The participants were 11 young people, between 15 and 17 years of age, who were living in a Residential Care Center in the northern region of the country. A document analysis grid was used to analyze the processes of young people, at an initial stage. Then, a semi-structured interview was conducted, in order to understand the point of view of young people about the context in which they are inserted, their view on the residential care process and their perceptions about leaving the institution. The results suggest that residential care is experienced in an overall negative way by the young people interviewed, since they perceive it as a break of emotional bonds. Despite all the difficulties that emerge during the institutionalization period, they report some positive changes, namely in terms of decreasing disruptive behaviors and substance use. The results also seem to indicate that these young people do not have the necessary skills to face the process of autonomization.