Research

Research is central to the future of the psychotherapy profession and a key strategic objective of the organisation. Our ultimate aim is to raise the profile of psychotherapy.

Key aims 

1. Ensuring research supports the UKCP’s policy objectives to increase access to psychotherapy.
2. Improving education about research and promote its importance within the UKCP membership.
3. Developing an effective system for collating clinical data from our membership.
4. Combining existing and new research to improve the evidence base for psychotherapy, in order to promote its importance for wellbeing and mental health.
5. Collaborating with psychotherapy researchers to define and address the needs for future research.

How we will work towards achieving these aims 

• Among the UKCP members are many influential researchers. We are working to strengthen connections with our research-active members to support impactful and widespread dissemination of their work, as well as to assist us in our drive to inform policy.
• Collaboration is essential the UKCP’s research strategy to develop innovative, high-impact research. We are working to enhance connections across the board, including with universities, the NHS and charitable organisations.
• We will be working within the organisation, as well as collaborating with others to promote the importance of research within training programmes and across the profession as a whole.

Get involved – connect and collaborate

We are always looking for new ways support our members with research and to connect with non-UKCP academics and practitioners. We are actively seeking to hear more about existing research and to discuss collaborations across all modalities. Our current areas of focus include:

• New ways of assessing psychotherapy and evaluating its effectiveness
• Collaborating on, and supporting, studies of effectiveness across therapeutic modalities and client populations.
• Innovative research investigating the therapeutic process
• Practice-informed research and research-informed practice

If you would like to get involved or would like to discuss active research projects or proposals, please email the research team.

Research Working Group

Research is very important to us at the UKCP to help promote the art and science of psychotherapy. We know that research comes in many forms, from practice-based research to large scale therapy trials, and everything else in between. As an organisation, we want to support members wishing to be more engaged with research and to promote work that is already happening. We also externally commission large scale research projects, to help support our important policy work.

As a relatively small organisation, with a limited research team, we have been working hard to think of the way best way to use our resources to improve research for the organisation and the membership. To help us achieve this, we have put together a board level Research Working Group to look at research strategy and how it can best be achieved.

The group will be focusing on how to better support the membership with research, whilst also address external research strategy.

This will include:

• Improving education and guidance about conducting psychotherapy research
• Assessing how we may be able to support therapists to gain ethical approval to conduct research
• Enhancing networking and collaboration opportunities
• Promoting research funding opportunities

We recently asked some questions about research as part of the membership survey and we’ll be using this information to help guide what we do next. We want to make sure that the work we do stays relevant to members and we’ll be continuing to ask for feedback and insight.