A time-series analysis of therapeutic alliance, interventions, and client's clinical status in an evidence-based single-case study: Evidence for establishing change mechanisms in psychotherapy.

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this study was to analyze the time-series of alliance, interventions, and client's post-sessions clinical status, to establish if alliance and adherence to cognitive-behavioral interventions preceded improvement in psychotherapy Method: A single-case study of a complete Cognitive-Behavioral treatment of a 27-year-old male diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder treatment was conducted. Alliance, adherence to cognitive-behavioral interventions, and client's therapeutic condition were assessed every two sessions during the entire treatment.

RESULTS

After controlling for the effect of autocorrelations, the transfer functions showed that alliance predicted client's clinical condition with a lag of two sessions throughout the entire treatment. However, the inverse relationship was not observed.

CONCLUSIONS

Results support the hypothesis of a time-lagged association between alliance and subsequent client's changes in their clinical condition in single case of a cognitive-behavioral treatment.